


If Only We Can All Smile Together

by Cixalea, JadePaloki



Category: EXO (Band), NCT (Band), NCT Dream, NCT127, SHINee, SuperM, WAYV, nctu
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, MAMA Era Powers (EXO), this is an ot23 household, you can pry ot12 from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 54,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26366533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cixalea/pseuds/Cixalea, https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadePaloki/pseuds/JadePaloki
Summary: It’s been1 month since Kai and Baekhyun arrived on EXO Planet to find the missing Legends,5 years since 127 became Smart Manufacturing’s private security force,5 years since WeishenV became Neo City’s beloved superheroes,10 years since the Dreamies have woken up, and10,000 years since Taemin swore revenge.An attempt to integrate SuperM, EXO, and NCT story lores.
Relationships: platonic - Relationship
Comments: 61
Kudos: 90





	1. 02's Graduation

**Author's Note:**

> “Inside the irregularity that’s hard to understand there’s a story that’s deeply hidden. Eyes are being opened through this song. Your dreams are being read. I’ve been awakened from a deep sleep.” - 7th Sense by NCTU

The Smart Manufacturing building, being the feat of Neo Culture Technology that it was, meant that it not only reached 130 floors into the sky but also 5 floors below ground. It was a daunting structure and an equally daunting task to keep the grounds secure. But even as the leader of the company’s private security force, there were still floors that Taeyong himself required special permission to access.

Such limitations did not exist for Director Taemin.

The ride down from the floor that was the cause for 127’s namesake was broken into five different elevator transfers, each requiring a thumbprint scan on an armed guard’s Neo Pad to clear with the SM database before one was allowed in or out of the elevator.

Because of this process, reaching the lobby from the 127th floor regularly took twenty minutes. Taeyong knew because he went up and down from that floor so often and because he designed the security procedures himself. His original security proposal included an additional retinal scan step at floors 120 and higher, but the CEO and his staff thought it would waste too much of their mornings just getting to their offices. Taeyong kept all his bitter comments inside.

When the two of them reached the lobby, Director Taemin led Taeyong to the out-of-the-way set of elevators that were the only way to access the basement levels.

The director reached into his suit jacket pocket and handed Taeyong a red-tinted security pass as they walked past the reception desks. Despite being head of building security, Taeyong’s fingerprints didn’t gain him access to these basement elevators, and if he tried, Taeyong wrote the very procedure that someone attempting so would be shot by one of the armed security men standing guard with a huge Neo Cryo Gun. Then, as per procedure, he would have been interrogated by 127, which would have been awkward. 127 would never let Taeyong live it down if they had to interrogate their own leader.

However, with a scan of Director Taemin’s hand, the elevator guard’s Neo Pad blinked green, and the elevator started its ascension up the shaft to ground level. While they waited, Taeyong pressed his thumb to the center of the rectangular security pass and then handed it to the guard once it beeped to confirm it had logged his thumbprint.

The guard in turn held the pass on the surface of the Neo Pad and waited. In a few seconds, it cleared, blinking green with approval and causing the pass to temporarily display, “Lee, Taeyong, 127, security level F130. Temporary security level increase authorization granted by Lee, Taemin, Brand Integrity, security level F130+B4.”

When the elevator finally arrived, the two stepped on. Taeyong couldn’t help but feel just a little childish excitement. The strangeness of the director summoning him in the dead of night and the weird voice he had heard in his mind only moments before the director’s call was long forgotten. 

He’d never been to the basement floors during his entire career at SM. As head of security, it drove him almost to the point of aneurysm that there were floors that he had not only never been to but didn’t have a  _ clue _ —didn’t have the clearance to know—what was on them. Taeyong had nothing but respect for his boss, but he argued with the man as much as he dared that it was critical to the safety of everyone in the building that he be told even a highly redacted hint of what was on these basement floors. The director just laughed that dainty laugh of his and patted him on the head like he was a child.

The doors opened for Director Taemin on the fourth basement floor. With another scan of the director’s finger and Taeyong’s security pass, the guard stationed on B4 moved out of the way and allowed them to step out of the elevator.

Taeyong was a little disappointed that he wasn’t going to be able to see any basement floors other than the fourth, but he pushed that thought aside quickly when he looked at the hallway and got an intense feeling of  _ fear _ .

It was so inexplicable and sudden that Taeyong prodded his telepathic channel. Like all the 127 members who underwent the NCT enhancement procedure, along with increased strength and speed, he acquired telepathic and empathic abilities.

However, only 127 members were able to use this power. And as expected, when he checked, the channel was dead. So Taeyong was understandably unnerved that he couldn’t place the origin of this strange feeling.

He was snapped out of his reflection when Director Taemin stepped into the corridor. Taeyong shook his head and followed.

The hallway was painted bright white and linoleum lined the floor. For the most of their journey through the maze of turns, they encountered no one else save for a woman dressed in white with a green-tinted face visor. Honestly, she looked like a nurse. Was this a private hospital?

The workaholic in Taeyong noticed that there were quite a number of high quality ceiling cameras positioned professionally, ensuring that there wouldn’t be a single blindspot in the winding hallways. There were no windows into the rooms they passed that Taeyong had seen yet, and all the doors were heavy and steel with Neo Tech Thumbprint _ and _ Retinal Scanners installed at every single one—something he was denied permission to install on the upper floors.

“Why so quiet?”

“Sir?” Taeyong about jumped at Taemin’s soft but sudden question. Why was he so tense?

“You look like you have a million questions.”

“I’ve asked for four years to be given access to the basement. I’m not about to ruin it by asking too many questions.”

Director Taemin made that amused humming sound that he liked to make. “I thought I paid you to be paranoid.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t trust you, sir?”

“What do you think?” The look in the director’s eyes above his smile looked perfectly innocent.

Taeyong’s mind whirled, trying to decipher what in the world Director Taemin was talking about when apparently they’d arrived at their destination.

The door was labeled with more than just a number unlike the others they’d passed in the bland hallway. Emblazoned on a plain placard were the words, “DREAM LAB.”

At the door, Director Taemin scanned his thumb and leaned down to do the retinal scan. Taeyong reached out with his security pass when the director stopped him. He pulled out a bracelet from his pocket this time. It was silver with red lights embedded into it.

Taeyong slipped it on his wrist with only slight hesitation. There were just about a dozen security problems with it. Taeyong’s temporary pass was registered to give him basic access to the doors on B4, but apparently this door had a higher level security clearance. But, procedure demanded that Director Taemin should have given his pass another temporary security upgrade—not given him another pass entirely. And his identity was not registered to this security bracelet either. How would they know who entered this door? It implied that whoever had a bracelet like this could come and go through this door anonymously. How in the world was this bracelet keeping anything down here secure?

Taeyong also didn’t know of any security pass in SM that worked with a bracelet. Did they hire a subcontractor to do the security in the basement? That may have explained the sloppiness. Taeyong knew the first thing he was going to assign his agents when he got back was to find out who exactly this other security company was and have a little chat with their leader about basic building safety.

When Taeyong got his right wrist through the circlet, it beeped twice before shrinking. He flinched as it clamped firmly but not tightly. He wouldn’t be able to slip it off now. An undeserved panic crept its way in his lungs. Since when was he claustrophobic? He purposefully took deep breaths and tried to calm down.

The atmosphere inside the Dream Lab was a sharp contrast to the hallway outside. This room was dimly lit and warm. And the air simmered with the sound of bubbling water.

When the door hissed closed behind them, Director Taemin and Taeyong found themselves at the center of attention. There were several women in long, white lab coats and those strange green visors, whose blank expressions regarded them passively as the two entered.

“Director Taemin, why is 00-127 with you?” 

This speaker resembled a doctor with his long coat and Neo Pad. He also looked rather out of place being the only man in the group and in the fact that his face was anything but emotionless. He quickly walked over to the two of them apparently rather distressed and slightly out of breath—and was his hair...singed?

Taeyong’s brain, which hadn’t shut down since stepping foot on this floor, was reeling. How did this man know the numbers tattooed on Taeyong’s upper back? He had to be involved with the enhancement team. It’s the only way he could have known, but why was he here then?

Despite his almost humorous appearance, Taeyong found himself taking a step back from the doctor. His heart was pounding, and he could feel himself sweating in some base reaction that he didn’t understand.

“I just thought it was only appropriate that he tag along since we’re here to retrieve his new partner.”

Taeyong blinked at Director Taemin with questions bursting from his eyes, but the doctor waving his Neo Pad had the director’s attention.

“I would strongly discourage the two from interacting before 02 has completed the graduation process. There’s a chance 00-127 could relapse—”

“And that’s why you and your lovely team get paid the big bucks.” The director smiled saccharinely and wrapped an arm around Taeyong’s stiff form to pull him toward the back room.

The doctor followed behind them like a stressed duckling. “Memory alteration is not as simple as deleting video footage. It’s a delicate process that doesn’t have a perfect rate of success. And our studies have shown that if done repeatedly—”

“Thank you, Dr. Minho.” Director Taemin waved a hand.

Dr. Minho didn’t leave them, but he did take the cue to be silent.

As the three of them approached the back room, Taeyong’s hands started to shake in a way they never did, even when he was being shot at. Something was horribly wrong with his heart as it threatened to burst from his chest, and he didn’t know _ why _ .

He started to feel lightheaded and opened his mouth to tell the director when he looked up and saw what was in the room they had just entered.

It was rows and rows of huge glass tubes, most containing a human suspended in chewing gum-pink bubbling liquid.

Taeyong made a very undignified yelp as knife-like pain stabbed through his skull. He brought a hand up in reflex and tried to blink through blurry images that flashed rapid fire in his brain.

When his head cleared, he found himself shuffling toward the third tube in the line—the first one that was actually occupied. The tubes labeled 00 and 01 were empty, but there were nurses hovering around the tube labeled 02. The boy who floated inside it looked kind and unshakingly familiar.

“They look so peaceful when they sleep, don’t they? I guess that’s why they call them the Dreamies,” Director Taemin said slowly. “Cute but very fitting once you see them.”

“What is this place?” Taeyong’s voice was a whisper.

“They’re getting enhanced. Surely you figured that out by now.”

“But that means I would have been here too, right? But I wasn’t. I remember being taken to hospital in the—”

“Eighth district. You went under on a late Saturday night and then you woke up early Sunday morning. The nurses said the operation was successful, your family was in the waiting room, and they were so excited to see you. Your little sister had fallen asleep in the waiting room, and she fell asleep again in your arms while hugging you in the hospital bed.”

Taeyong shook his head. Not because it was untrue but because that was exactly what happened.

“Dr. Minho’s so kind with the false memories he implants. He’s such a softie.”

“You’re saying I was here?” Taeyong looked at 02’s tank as if it held the truth. “Those memories…. It was fake? That’s possible?”

“Why are you still surprised at the power of Neo Tech?”

Taeyong could barely think straight. He looked up at the floating boy’s deceivingly peaceful face, his white hospital gown flowing with the slow circulation of the gel made him look ethereal.

Taeyong’s mind throbbed with memories that were held back by just a very weak wall of whatever Dr. Minho did to his mind. He realized that now. He felt his eyes burn at the frustration and shock of it all.

He looked miserably down at the clipboard attached to the 02 tank. His brain was pulsing so badly he couldn’t even get his eyes to focus enough to read past the name at the top of the paper. 

_ Lee, Mark. _

Taeyong’s skull jolted again, making him squint and grind his teeth in pain.

“Is this gonna take all day?” Director Taemin asked blandly.

The nurses said nothing, pushing Taeyong aside mutely as they finished up disconnecting wires and flipping switches on the sides of the tank.

“I must remind you, Director, that 02 is not completely ready.” Dr. Minho looked intently between the Neo Pad and Mark floating in the tube. “I don’t want you to be surprised if he is not able to perform at the same standards as the rest of the 127 members.”

Director Taemin hummed through his nose. “My hand has been forced. We need him now.” 

Taeyong flinched when the director patted him on the shoulder. He could feel his poker face failing as his pain tolerance was being reached.

“Taeyong will take care of him though. He won’t let 02 become the weakest link.”

Finally, the tank hissed and tilted back until it was horizontal then drained of its pink-colored gel in a high-pitched whirring of machinery. Dr. Minho gave one last look at Director Taemin who nodded firmly. Then the doctor exhaled and pushed a final button so that the front of the tank hissed and opened slowly.

The smell of the residual pink liquid hit Taeyong like a firetruck. He felt his stomach violently react, and he smacked a hand over his mouth and breathed slowly to prevent himself from puking.

It didn’t take long for Mark to become conscious. As the other’s eyes fluttered open, Taeyong wondered horrifically if he really was just asleep in there instead of medically sedated.

He blinked up at them with sleep-heavy eyes, but when his gaze landed on Taeyong and Director Taemin, the bleariness disappeared.

“Taeyong, behind you!” The boy leapt out of the tube with agility that shouldn’t have been possible for how long he had been floating stagnant in the tube.

He grabbed Taeyong’s wrist to pull the older behind him, and at the sound of the kid’s voice, Taeyong’s brain seemed to seize with pain. He normally would never have allowed himself to be moved like this especially by someone he didn’t know, but he couldn’t even see straight. 

Mark steadied his stance with Taeyong listing woozily behind him, and he narrowed his eyes with hatred at the director.

Director Taemin laughed daintily. “Taeyong, restrain 02.”

Fighting through the pain, Taeyong grabbed Mark’s arms and with a single kick, forced him to his knees.

“Taeyong?! What are you doing?” Mark’s voice sounded betrayed.

Taeyong could feel himself go pale. Without a doubt, this boy knew him. And he had an unshakable feeling that he knew him too. He didn’t let up any and kept Mark immobilized as the director said.

The director knelt down as if to explain a life lesson to a small child. Mark thrashed once, and Director Taemin laughed as he looked him in the eyes.

“None of you can hurt me out here.” He pulled down a part of his collar to reveal a horrible scar that Taeyong had never seen before.

That seemed to be significant to Mark as his eyes went wide, and he started to shake his head.

Several sets of shrill beeping noises began sounding, summoning a large group of nurses into the room. When Taeyong and Mark looked to the side, they could see the nurses flipping switches at the bases of the still occupied tubes.

“Dr. Minho?” Director Taemin’s voice was flat.

The doctor was tapping rapidly on his Neo Pad. “This is pretty typical, sir. Whenever a subject is disconnected, the others show signs of shock and mental distress. We simply bring them out of REM into lighter stages of sleep so they can’t dream and that seems to help initially. The subjects will be much more sensitive for a few weeks, so we’ll keep round-the-clock watches on them until they’re stable enough to let them start dreaming again.”

Taeyong’s heart twinged at the sight. The bodies writhed inside the pink liquid like they were being electrocuted. A few of them were even curling up or attempting to hug themselves. It looked like they were children having really bad nightmares.

“No!” Mark cried. He gave a firm twist and with strength that only came from an enhanced, he managed to rip himself from Taeyong’s grip.

Mark ran toward the tubes, pressing his hands against the occupied ones like he could reach through to them.

“Renjun! Jisung!” He called their names as he ran to each, trying to get their attention and wake them from their distress to no avail. “Jeno! Chenle! Jaemin!”

At the sound of the names, Taeyong felt his vision white out, and he collapsed to his knees. He held his hands against the side of his head in an effort to keep his head from exploding.

“Taeyong. I said to restrain him!”

The director’s voice was buried underneath what seemed like thousands of voices that might have been familiar but were too muffled to really make out. They spun in a cacophony inside his mind and left Taeyong completely disoriented.

He didn’t know how long he was there whimpering in terrible pain as memories tried and tried to surface but couldn’t. All he knew was the second Director Taemin put his hand on his head….

Red.

Taeyong’s mind stilled. No burgeoning memories. No voices. No pain. Just red.

_ Restrain 02. _

It was the only thing that mattered now. It was simple.

Taeyong hadn’t fought a lot of enhanced other than other 127 members when they sparred, but he knew just about what someone enhanced with NCT could take. He grabbed Mark from under his shoulder, swung him over his head, and slammed him into the ground.

He barely had time to blink before Mark was up and swinging a punch at him. Taeyong managed to roll to his feet and dodge out of the way only to be knocked down by a kick that sent him staggering.

“I don’t want to fight you, Taeyong!”

The words barely even registered in Taeyong’s mind. He immediately attacked again, this time using his full strength and knocking 02 into the wall across the room.

Mark wheezed and tried to pull himself up from where he lay crumpled, but Taeyong knew there was still fight left in him. He could take care of that.

He pummeled Mark. Until Mark was a bloodied pulp. Until Taeyong’s fists were red.

Mark begged for mercy. Begged for Taeyong to stop and try to remember him.

Taeyong stopped only when Director Taemin’s hand landed on his shoulder. The red drained from Taeyong’s vision, from his mind.

When he finally looked down at the gruesome sight he’d created, he wasn’t as shocked as a normal person. He was used to this sort of carnage. However, he usually wasn’t the one to cause it.

“Good work, Taeyong.”

Taeyong took a breath and got to his feet.

Mark lifted his head, his swelling right eye was still able to carry his fierce gaze as he looked up at him with determination, and Taeyong felt something enter his mind.

It was a prodding sensation happening at a different part of his brain than the wall that held back his memories. Something lit up inside like neon, and Taeyong felt his spine go rigid as he was flooded with emotion.

He didn’t remember Mark. Not really. His memories were still thoroughly kept back. However, he did remember how he  _ felt _ about Mark. He had some vague recollection of learning in school that memories and the emotions tied to memories were stored in different parts of the brain.

Taeyong gripped his head as powerful wave after wave of feeling was awoken after it had been dormant. Even without actual memories to give the emotions sense, they were just as powerful and real. And the realization made him gasp.

Mark was his friend. Practically a little brother. He trusted Mark with his life. And as Taeyong looked at the bloodied boy before him, he felt overwhelming shame.

Before Taeyong knew what he was doing, he found himself on his knees cradling the fallen boy.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mark.”

His head felt like it would explode. With the newly remembered emotions that were tied to Mark awakened in Taeyong’s brain, his actual memories were fighting tooth and nail to be let free. Taeyong rocked in internal agony as he pulled the beaten boy close to him.

Mark’s voice was strained and breathy from all his injuries. “So did the crazy wear off?”

Taeyong found himself smiling.

Although the moment didn’t last. A nurse tried to pull Mark away, and Taeyong screamed. It was something animalistic from his chest that he had no explanation for. He folded himself protectively over the kid.

“Looks to me like 02 will do just fine, Doc.” Director Taemin’s voice hovering above him was as casual as someone ordering a wine off a menu. “Please finish getting him ready to be discharged. I want him to start working with 127 as soon as possible.”

The nurses tried again to extract Mark from his arms. Taeyong burst.

Even with bruised knuckles, he punched with all his enhanced force into the face of one of the nurses. Her visor shattered into pieces, and she honestly should have died. But instead, Taeyong heard mechanical gears whirling. In the shock of it, he found himself staring at the broken insides of a machine.

The nurse was a robot.

The other nurses twitched before grabbing on to Taeyong’s arms. Now with their full inhuman strength, they pried his fingers back and snatched Mark from his grip.

Mark screamed and squirmed in the nurses’ hold. “Taeyong! Don’t let them take me!”

“Mark!”

Cold panic overwhelmed him. Taeyong was no longer the analytical marksman who was the leader of the most skilled group of enhanced ever to be employed by SM. He was just barely a man. He was in pain, confused, and scared. But more than that, he was scared for Mark who his entire soul screamed at him to protect with his life.

The nurses’ grip on him was literally steel, but Taeyong knew how to handle pain. He thrashed and managed to get one arm free with which he reached out for Mark’s outstretched hand but was blocked by the director himself.

Mark’s desperate pleas were cut off abruptly as the hydraulic doors slid shut behind the nurses that carried him.

Taeyong looked at his boss’s humored face and felt a righteous rage boil up inside him. He snarled and before he could think through the gravity of the action, took a swing at the director.

The director’s face should have become like the nurse’s, but Director Taemin _ caught his punch _ .

Taeyong froze. No matter how many times he blinked, his fist was still caught in Director Taemin’s hand. He felt his heart drop to his shoes. “You’re enhanced?”

The director said nothing, but Taeyong swore that his eyes glowed red, and the room trembled. Every  _ cell _ in Taeyong’s body trembled. Inside Director Taemin’s otherworldly red eyes was an ancientness and a power that was beyond the simple strength of an enhanced. It was pure power that he couldn’t even fathom. It made Taeyong feel like an ant standing before a god.

The director closed his fingers, utterly crushing Taeyong’s right hand within his like it was made of clay. Taeyong screamed in absolute agony, collapsing and cradling his destroyed appendage. It was torment like he’d never felt before. Yet somehow Taeyong was certain Director Taemin could have crushed his very soul if he wanted to. He was being merciful. He was  _ playing _ with him.

“Director! What are you doing?”

Taeyong recognized the voice as Dr. Minho’s.

The doctor slid to his knees at Taeyong’s side, waving the Neo Pad over his hand while it scanned him. He spoke softly to Taeyong, urging him to let him see the injury better, but Taeyong only shrank away, swearing at him and kicking like a child.

“Wiping him again shouldn’t be as difficult seeing as he hasn’t relapsed completely.” Director Taemin’s voice was sweet and soft again, but the red wasn’t quite gone from his eyes.

“Humans aren’t like you, sir. They’re fragile.”

“You shouldn’t grow too attached to your work, Doc.” Director Taemin patted Dr. Minho on the head as he passed by him and Taeyong. “Give him sweet memories.”

Taeyong watched his boss exit the same door Mark was taken through. Even more than the pain, all he could think of was Mark and how he failed him.

“He won’t hurt him. I promise.”

It was only then that Taeyong realized that he was calling for Mark. Calling for his friend.

“You’ve been through a lot today. Let’s get you fixed up, okay? You’ll be alright.”

Dr. Minho pressed a button on his Neo Pad and the security bracelet blinked brightly before injecting something into his wrist. It was just seconds before Taeyong lost consciousness. Ah. So that’s what the bracelets were for.


	2. Two Worlds That Seem Alike

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Two different space-times - don’t know. There’s no time to explain - we gotta go. Hurry, hurry, the parallel way into the 4th dimension only opens today.” - Two Moons by EXO

**1 Hour Earlier**

_“Foolish of you to think I was something you could simply wash your hands of.”_

_The sirens blaring all over the facility deafened to the sound of_ red _. Even while resisting the mobilization of thoughts tunneling through their minds, Legends dropped to their knees one by one._

_Vision blurred, and the figure standing before them was so distorted by the aura of red around him that the resemblance he once shared with the Legends was almost unfathomable._

The plate of food lowering over Baekhyun’s shoulder disrupted the 16-year-old memory replaying in his head. He couldn’t help but notice that there was a spoonful or two more of rice than what the waitress was serving to the other customers under the shaded veranda. Perks of being a regular, maybe? More likely the perks of having a waitress who’s been trying to catch Kai’s attention for months.

Kai looked over his shoulder toward the waitress and gave her the biggest of his puppy dog smiles. “Gracias!”

Though Kai’s pronunciation was still heavily influenced by the London English that he’d learned while living there for ten years, it was close enough, and the waitress was kind enough that she smiled back.

Between Kai’s knowledge of English and Baehyun’s French they were usually able to piece together what she said to them. However, for whatever they couldn’t, there was always body language.

The waitress pointed to the calendar that was visible inside her cafe. All the days but the last were crossed off of the current month. She pointed to the two of them, pointed to the ground, and then shrugged.

“Ah. Yes, we’ll probably be here next month too.”

“ _Hopefully not though_ ,” Baekhyun muttered telepathically to Kai.

The waitress tried not to look too happy. Before she left to attend to other customers, she picked up one of their forks and forced it into Baekhyun’s hand, wrapping his fingers around it like a child. After a few rapid sentences that didn’t need a whole lot of translation, she smiled and left.

“ _Try this,_ ” Kai pushed the plate toward Baekhyun after only a bite of whatever the waitress brought them. “ _I have no idea what it is, but it’s good._ ”

Baekhyun hadn’t eaten anything more than a spoonful of rice in forty-eight hours, but his stomach rolled at the thought of eating anything. “ _Not hungry._ ”

He directed his attention back out to the massive salt plain while Kai shrugged and helped himself to both their portions of the mystery food.

They sat there under the bent umbrella of the mediocre cafe listening to tourists from around the world filter in and out with price-gouged drinks to refresh themselves from the Bolivian heat before heading back out onto the plain to take another three thousand aesthetic selfies.

“ _Would you stop bouncing your leg? You’re making me anxious_.”

Kai obliged, and Baekhyun lost his gaze in the bright reflection of the sun on the thin layer of water covering the salt flat. But the second Kai finished his food, his leg unconsciously started again. Baekhyun stepped on his foot, this time forcibly stopping the action.

Kai groaned out loud in frustration, slamming his hands on the table and standing up. “ _I need something else to eat._ ”

With the ridiculous temperature and the anticipation of their last hope to find the others about to be tested, Baekhyun didn’t know how in the world Kai not only had an appetite but couldn’t seem to stop eating.

Baekhyun grabbed the other Legend’s wrist before he could walk away. “ _Kai_.”

Kai deflated back into his seat, slumping against the table to rest his head miserably in his arms. “ _I’m sorry. I’m just so…._ ”

Baekhyun let sympathy and understanding flow through their empathic connection. Kai shuddered, but it seemed to take the edge off his stress.

“ _Wanna walk around a little?_ ”

Kai nodded. Baekhyun could feel the teleporter getting twitchy from being still even for a minute.

The two got up from their table which was immediately snatched up by a pair of cyclists and headed off into the distance.

While neither of them had power over heat anymore, they had enough latent control of it left inside them since the Split that they didn’t have to worry about their skin burning while they walked.

The Salar de Uyuni was the most famous and largest salt flat on Earth. Under the thin layer of water that coated the ground from the recent rain, Baekhyun could still see the hexagonal shaped rings of brine that became more prominent when the water evaporated. It reminded him so much of EXO Planet that he knew it was no coincidence that there was a wormhole between the two worlds here.

The eclipse that was their ticket to cross between the two planets couldn’t take any longer to arrive. It had been 16 years since they’d been home on EXO Planet, and Baekhyun was getting understandably more and more impatient with every eclipseless day that passed.

Kai kept looking up at the sky, scanning as if it would make Earth and EXO Planet align faster and summon the eclipse right that second. Although, for all Baekhyun knew, Kai _could_ sense it better than him. Having control of space might have given him an ability like that.

“ _They’ll be there, okay?_ ” Kai’s tone sounded like the assurance was more for himself than for anyone else.

“ _They better_.” Baekhyun felt something dark and red stirring inside him. He clamped it down before any Baëkhyun-ish thoughts could fully rise up.

Kai tore his gaze from the sky to give the other a concerned and cautious look as he sensed a flare of the Red Force. Baekhyun breathed in deeply and tilted a smile up at Kai. “ _They’ll be there._ ”

Seemingly satisfied at the absence of red in Baekhyun’s eyes, Kai relaxed and returned the smile.

Kris. Luhan. Tao. Xiumin. Chen. Lay. Chanyeol. Sehun. Suho. D.O. They would save them all this time. They would purify the Red Force. And they could finally, finally set everything right.

Kai went rigid then slowly looked to Baekhyun, wide-eyed. They both felt it—the sudden static that loosened the air around them and the suction that could only mean one thing. Kai gasped as he saw the dark shape of EXO Planet appearing in the sky. The connection between the two twin planets opening and pulling on their souls was enough to make them stumble in the shallow water.

The eclipse with EXO Planet was something that humans couldn’t actually see. They saw lunar and solar eclipses—anything that had to do with the Earth and its tiny moon—but they for some reason couldn’t see eclipses with EXO Planet.

Baekhyun found himself fixated on the reflection of the eclipse in the water. Any time there was an eclipse with Earth’s parallel, mirrors became windows that showed what it was like on the other side—on the twin planet.

The salt plain was now essentially the world’s biggest mirror. And Baekhyun saw way more of EXO Planet than he could just through a regular mirror. He was seeing an entire city. Skyscrapers. Cars. People. EXO Planet—the complement to Earth—was thriving.

Kai grabbed Baekhyun’s hand as the tugging sensation on their inner beings became even more insistent. Baekhyun’s heart was beating rapidly, and he closed his eyes to let the sensation overwhelm him.

There was a flash and the world whited out.

The travel through the wormhole was not entirely unlike teleporting—though it wasn’t a sensation that he’d felt for himself more than a dozen times since the Split. Before they were captured in the Overdose Lab, the Legends made frequent trips between earth and EXO Planet using the six wormholes in various locations all over the world. Kai used to be able to teleport between Earth and EXO Planet using his own power without even needing a wormhole, but ever since he lost Luhan, his powers became weaker as it did with all of them when they were separated from their complement.

When the two Legends opened their eyes again, the first thing they checked was that they were still with each other. Ever since the Split, the Legends and most of reality had become entrapped in twos. There were twin worlds. Every Legend had a pair. And most recently, only two of them had escaped recapture by the Red Force. The fear of being alone was incomprehensible not only to the Legends personally but to them as beings.

Kai squeezed Baekhyun’s hand. Naturally the teleporter recovered faster from traveling through the wormhole than Baekhyun. There was a sigh of relief that bounced mutually through their mental connection. They weren’t each other’s complements. They couldn’t truly fill the holes left by the absence of their counterparts, but at least they weren’t alone.

Baekhyun’s consciousness started to settle, and he felt Kai reach out for as much as his telepathic senses would allow—scouring the area for Luhan or any of the other Legends.

Silence.

Kai’s breath hitched, and he dropped down into a squat to hug his knees. Baëkhyun couldn’t help but feel the disappointment too—and the Red Force infection within him capitalized on that, dragging his thoughts to dark places.

All of this for nothing. After spending five years searching every corner of the earth for the other Legends, the only thing that still kept them going was the hope that the others must not be on Earth anymore but had been taken to EXO Planet. But now that they were here….

Baekhyun shook his head, forcing Baëkhyun out of his mind. “ _Come on, Kai. We can’t search a whole planet in a day. We’ll have to do a little leg work first just like we did on Earth._ ”

Kai shuttered, trying to center himself.

It was daytime when they left Earth so naturally it was night on EXO Planet. Baekhyun summoned light so they could actually see their physical surroundings. The two of them stared up in awe as the light allowed them to see that the wormhole had transported them in front of an absolutely enormous tree.

They couldn’t even see the true span of the branches in the darkness, but it seemed to be that it was the width and height of a skyscraper.

The salt plain on Earth was practically devoid of life, but here, this tree was naturally the opposite—not just alive but flourishing. But the thing that stood out most was that the two Legends could _sense_ the tree. The tree, while looking like a huge version of a regular tree, had some sort of aura that plants on Earth or EXO Planet shouldn’t have had. Despite the overwhelming resemblance, Baekhyun pushed down the thoughts of the Tree of Life. That train of thought would only lead him somewhere depressing and with the Red Force infection, he couldn’t dare to entertain such sad thoughts.

Kai, curious, reached out to brush his hand against the trunk. The second his fingertips made contact, something within the tree rushed through his hand like an electric current.

“ _Kai! Help us!_ ”

Baekhyun and Kai gasped in unison at the telepathic message. They _knew_ that voice. But just like that, the connection was lost.

 _“Luhan!”_ Kai’s cry was of both lightheaded relief and heartstopping panic as he pressed his palms against the tree trunk desperately trying to reestablish his connection.

When they received no response, Baekhyun joined in too, wondering if together however Luhan was using the strange tree as a conductor for their telepathy that it would help if the both of them were touching it.

“ _Luhan! Where are you?! Please!_ ”

Despite Kai’s pleas, Baekhyun knew that if Luhan wasn’t talking to Kai—to his complement that he hadn’t spoken to in over 16 years—that it meant he couldn’t. He didn’t know what that meant, but just the fact that they heard Luhan’s voice again was enough to make Baekhyun’s knees give out. He numbly slid against the tree to the ground, trying to wrap his brain around the fact that that actually really, truly happened and this wasn’t another dream he would wake up from.

 _“He said ‘us,”_ Baekhyun whispered.

Kai’s wet eyes met Baekhyun’s as he looked down at where the Light Legend had fallen to his knees.

Baekhyun smiled, jumping up. _“He said ‘us!’ We were right! They’re here!_ ”

Kai absolutely crushed Baekhyun between his arms as wave after wave of strong emotions were thrown back and forth between their connection. After being starved for hope for so long, even just a few words from Luhan was more than enough.

Nothing could stop them from finding the others. After 10,000 years, they would be twelve again. They would be _one_.

* * *

Taemin slipped on his Neo Ring and jammed his way through all three different passcodes until Minho’s face popped up on his wall display.

“I thought Number 07-EXO was to be under constant sedation.”

Behind Minho he could see red alarms flashing and various nurses and security robots rushing chaotically.

“He is, sir! His brain waves have always been typical of sleep. Until just now, that is.”

“Then set up an IV and feed him suppressants 24/7 from now on.”

“We’ve already done so, sir. It’s just….” There was a huge creaking noise and then the sound of shattering glass as some blue fluid gushed across the floor. “07-EXO’s telepathic activity seems to have woken the others as well. We’re in the process of temporarily suppressing them until we can get them back under proper sedation.”

“Have any of those in the Dream Lab been affected?”

Minho shook his head. “The Dream Lab is reporting nothing out of the ordinary with the subjects.”

Taemin saw Minho flinch out of the way of a burst of fire. The camera feed on the Neo Pad trembled terribly from Minho scrambling for cover under a table. 

“Good because I’m coming down there.”

Minho’s eyes got wide above his strained smile. “To the Lucky One Lab, sir?”

“No. The Dream Lab. Thanks to you, our timetable has been changed. Prepare 02.”

Taemin didn’t even wait to hear Minho’s question and ripped off his Neo Ring, causing the call on the Neo Pad to cut off abruptly.

Next he jammed a finger into his earpiece, selecting the first name on his frequent contacts. “Taeyong. Meet me in the elevator immediately.”

“Yes, sir.” From the shuffling, he could tell that 127’s leader had probably tripped himself getting out of his bunk.

Taemin ended the call and marched out his office door, the lock automatically setting when it closed. Doyoung was there at his post with one hand on his head and the other braced to steady himself on the secretary’s desk. He never spoke unless spoken to and was in general one of the least annoying members of the 127 security team. Even now he attempted to keep himself standing straight even though it looked like someone had just hit him with a train.

Taemin was too controlled to let the dread wash over his face at the confirmation that 127 also heard Luhan’s telepathic message. A mistake that should not have been allowed to happen.

Taemin waved Doyoung off and entered the elevator, punching the 127 button and taking a deep breath once the doors were closed in front of him.

If Kai was on EXO Planet, then it was almost certain that Baekhyun was too. There was a reason they were the only two that he had failed to recapture. Their powers made them too slippery. Even WeishenV and 127 would have a rough time though they could definitely slow down the two Legends.

It was a race now. Taemin’s hand was forced, but he was holding some pretty powerful cards. Now he just had to play smart.

When the elevator had reached the 127th floor, Taeyong was standing there. He was the picture of professionalism even after having been mentally overwhelmed by Luhan—a Legend’s—desperate message. Taemin smiled. What great cards he held indeed.

He stepped aside and allowed Taeyong to enter and pressed the button for the lobby.

Time for his first play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our goal is to update every 2 weeks.
> 
> End of chapter question: Who's your bias?  
> Cixalea: Taeil / D.O / Minho  
> JadePaloki: Xiaojun and Hendery and Johnny / Chen / Minho
> 
> Let us know your NCT / EXO / SHINee biases in the comments!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Irregular Office

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I be bangin' with my team, we’re awake  
> The light shines on us in the street  
> In the city, we're closing our eyes and falling asleep  
> I can catch my dreams with my hands  
> Reflecting in my head” -Regular by NCT127

**One Month Later**

When Taeyong entered the 127 office floor, he saw Jaehyun sitting in front of the security camera feed station. Jaehyun wasn’t one to slump, but his boredom was evident outside of his body language in the constant static-like buzz that Taeyong could pick up from his empathic channel the closer he got to him.

Taeyong wasn’t unsympathetic though. Security work was either action-packed danger or mind-numbing monotony with little between, and he did not envy Jaehyun or Jungwoo one bit. At least when Taeyong was doing top floor security, he could stretch his legs, and he wasn’t forced to wear his eyesight away staring at screens for hours on end.

Most of the projections on the master display were showing different live videos of the SM building entrances or security checkpoints on different floors. However, under Director Taemin’s specific instructions, there were also some camera feeds that Jaehyun had hacked into that were from cameras off the building premises. Taeyong could spot one that was obviously a camera in the Neo Tree Park, another was from inside one of the security checkpoints stationed on the border of the city center limits that showed people being randomly searched, and most of the other specially acquired feeds were just traffic cams from major intersections in Neo City’s busier districts.

“ _Your earpiece is on right_?” Taeyong said as he approached the agent, leaning on the desk next to him with his arms crossed loosely.

“ _Yeah, boss,”_ Jaehyun tapped a few times on the holographic Neo Display absently, _“but you might want to remind them to actually turn the conference room mic on so I can keep up with the meeting this time_.”

Taeyong felt the slight fizzle of irritation float off Jaehyun along with his telepathic message. He understood though. No one in 127 took kindly to being out of the loop. Director Taemin liked to joke that he picked the nosiest people he could find to be 127, and Taeyong was tempted to agree.

“ _I’ll remind them_ ,” Taeyong said while glancing at the enlarged security feed of the lobby that Jaehyun was paying particular interest to.

“ _Is that Johnny?”_ Taeyong’s eyebrows furrowed as he leaned forward. _“He knows the meeting starts in five minutes, right?_ ”

Jaehyun nodded blandly, shoveling a handful of caffeine pops into his mouth delicately—if such a thing could be done. “ _I forgot. He said he saw a possible safety breach that he had to check out. He said to say he’d be a little late._ ”

Taeyong frowned and watched as Johnny expertly weaved his way through the crowd that was 127 floors below them. There was a reason he specialized in undercover work. He absolutely had the look of an awed tourist complete with the “I’ve been to the SM Tower Neo Observation Deck” t-shirt, which was his go-to disguise. No one would suspect anything.

Jaehyun must have sensed Taeyong’s anxiety because he spun the Neo Ring on his index finger and waved his hand to pull up several more angles of the lobby. Taeyong scoured them all with his expert eye, trying to find the security breach that Johnny spotted.

Taeyong didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but Johnny had a knack for these things.

After pretend-wandering around the lobby like a shark discreetly circling prey, Johnny approached a young woman, fumbling a SM Tower tourist information pamphlet at her bashfully—a classic misdirection technique.

The woman was wearing a dress that couldn’t possibly conceal many weapons. She was wearing heels that would make it hard to run, but maybe it was simply suspected she worked for Yes Gadgets? Was that why Johnny had red-flagged her?

Taeyong couldn’t help but wonder if he should radio some ground floor security grunts for back-up. Johnny usually didn’t get himself in over his head, but there was always a first for everything.

Jaehyun brought up a different angle of the girl, this time giving the two of them a good look at her face and…. Taeyong sighed. Now that they were seeing her from the front, it was _very_ clear what thing or rather _things_ about her drew Johnny’s attention.

Taeyong rubbed his forehead. “ _I’m going to kill him._ ”

“ _Could I have the honors? I have some new knives I want to try out._ ”

Jaehyun jumped in his seat as Yuta put a hand on his shoulder suddenly.

_“What are you doing over here? Volunteering for my shift?_ ” Jaehyun flashed puppy dog eyes.

Yuta laughed. “ _Just checking what was taking our boss so long._ ”

Taeyong didn’t have to point to direct Yuta’s gaze toward the highlighted security feed. Johnny was very deep into his flirting and the girl seemed to be falling for it, brushing her hair behind her ear and giggling.

“ _Please let me maim him. I promise not to leave the marks where they’re visible_.”

Taeyong couldn’t stand it anymore and jammed his finger into the Neo Earpiece. “Johnny! What do you think you’re doing?!”

Taeyong wished he could have felt more pleased at Johnny flinching suddenly, making the girl he was flirting with look at him with concern.

“Get up here right now or I’ll assign you to Jungwoo’s graveyard shift of monitor duty for the next month!” The nice thing about talking out loud rather than using telepathy was that you could do more with volume when speaking aloud.

The cameras that Jungwoo and Jaehyun designed captured in glorious high definition the exact shade that Johnny blushed to when he realized that he was caught. He awkwardly broke off the conversation and practically sprinted toward the elevator.

Yuta headed to the briefing room with a smirk, and Taeyong touched his earpiece to close his channel with Johnny.

He stifled a flinch as his hand locked up half-way into uncurling his fingers, temporarily freezing his hand in a clawed position.

This had been happening recently, and he’d been meaning to get it looked at. It wasn’t painful necessarily, just extremely uncomfortable and frankly a bit terrifying.

Director Taemin said that the weapons team discovered some faulty wiring, and it was just bad luck that the Cryo Gun was in Taeyong’s hand when it blew up. Guess this was just a weird side-effect of having his hand frozen solid.

Turning subtly, he used his other hand and tried to force his fingers straight, and after a bit of fanegaling, something unlocked and his hand relaxed and returned to normal. He couldn’t stop himself from telepathically projecting a bit of the relief he felt at having full range of motion back in his dominant hand.

Jaehyun looked up curiously at him once he picked up on the emotion, sending his leader a look and a concerned flutter of feeling along the empathic channel.

He shrugged off the incident, but Jaehyun didn’t look convinced. Taeyong hadn’t really talked about his hand to anyone. He didn’t want them to worry that their leader might not be fit for duty. He’d get it checked out soon. When he had some time in his schedule open up.

Jaehyun sometimes gave off the impression that he was quiet though the reason was simply because he lacked the obsessive need to dominate conversation. Especially when they had people like Haechan on their team, Jaehyun by contrast was usually content to listen and merely season the conversation with a sprinkling of witty remarks here or there.

When talking one-on-one however, Jaehyun could be a huge gossip, and Taeyong knew that it wouldn’t be long before everyone in the group knew about his hand. But he was just grateful that Jaehyun wasn’t grilling him for answers right now. There was a meeting he conveniently had to go lead.

He clapped Jaehyun on the shoulder as he passed him by and entered the conference room.

He walked around the long table where only five of the nine 127 members were sitting. Taeil smacked a sleeping Haechan’s arm when Taeyong walked past. Haechan snorted, grasping the chair’s armrests as he sat up panicked. He whined at Taeil and at least had the decency to look embarrassed although Taeyong couldn’t fault him too much. This was during his off-shift when he normally slept, and the kid was still quite young.

It’d be a little hypocritical for him to be harsh on Haechan. In order to lead the meeting, Taeyong needed Doyoung to cover his shift on the top floor, and Doyoung would surely call that favor back with interest since it involved him missing his beauty sleep.

Taeyong reached the head of the conference table and crossed his arms. “Johnny is currently...indisposed, so we will start without him.”

No matter how he tried to make the situation vague, it did little to hide the envious emotions that radiated out of the 127 members telepathically.

127 was a very professional organization, but if Taeyong had one critique, it was that not a one of them shared their leader’s reverence for regulation. 127 were chronically behind on paperwork, and Haechan had even once triggered the fire alarm so that he could get out of doing his Friday reports. But 127 rarely played hooky during mission briefings because of their fear of missing out and falling out of the information loop—the one thing their very odd collection of personalities had firmly in common.

“ _Are you sure we have to still have the meeting then?_ ”

Taeyong answered Jungwoo’s comment by slipping on the conference room projector’s Neo Ring which buzzed on his index finger when it began to automatically boot up the holographic display on the wall behind him.

“Because Jaehyun and Doyoung are listening in on the overhead mic, I’d like to ask everyone to speak out loud rather than use telepathy for the duration of this briefing.”

“Jaehyun! Have you finished fixing my Neo Pad yet?” Doyoung’s voice came in over the speakers as if to prove his presence and bother Jaehyun at the same time. “It’s been like a week!”

Taeyong quickly muted Jaehyun and Doyoung’s mics before the argument he knew was coming could completely derail everyone else in the briefing. He took a deep breath before curling his hand into a fist to load up the presentation file.

He took a large step to the side so that everyone could see the title slide which bore a copy of the festival promotion gif that SM had been running on advertisement Neo Boards all over the city for the past month.

“As I’m sure you’re all aware, tomorrow is the SM Day parade.”

“Wow. Already?” Taeil blinked.

Haechan snickered. “Go outside, old man.”

“This year,” Taeyong raised his voice to bring attention back to himself and the presentation. “CEO Onew has decided he will give his speech in person in front of the citizens at the end of the parade, so we are to be providing security.”

“Security at a public venue?” Mark quirked an eyebrow. “I’ve only been working a month, but I’m pretty sure that’s literally in WeishenV’s job description.”

“Wow. Have none of you ever gone to an SM Parade? WeishenV is the main attraction.” Haechan waved his hand casually as he leaned back in his chair. “They do autographs and kiss babies’ foreheads and stuff.”

Taeyong wasn’t sure which one of them projected their mental picture of ridiculous parade balloons that looked like WeishenV members floating over the streets, but all of them groaned out loud.

“Hey, Yuta, you could finally get your Winwin action figure signed.” If anyone but Taeil—the other lowkey-highkey Winwin fan—said it, that person probably would have died.

Yuta instead swiped his leg underneath Taeil’s chair and dumped him out of it.

“WeishenV _are_ technically doing security during the parade,” Taeyong began again. “While their presence does well from a business standpoint, publicly announcing that all of WeishenV will be present at the event decreases the parade’s chances of being targeted by GOT7.”

“They're the terrorist splinter cell of Justice for Your Planet, right? Have made more threats?” Mark stopped typing the meeting minutes to ask the question, and the silence in the suddenly serious atmosphere was amplified.

“You all know about the one they made against the Neo Tree.” Taeyong saw everyone nod. “Though it’s been a month with no sabotage attempt made, the company still thinks it’s too soon to start opening it back up to the public, so guards will continue to be stationed there until further notice.”

“If any JYP group had even a small protest planned—not to mention something as big as assassinating the SM CEO—in the works, at least one of my informants would have heard. Especially this close to the actual day of the parade,” Yuta offered.

“And I haven’t heard any buzz about it in the usual chatrooms.” Jungwoo’s fingers danced deftly over his Neo Pad. “I’ll keep looking though. They’re always making new ones.”

Taeyong nodded. “GOT7 nor any faction in JYP hasn’t made any official announcements to protest or stop the parade. But we can’t deny that the CEO being at the most crowded event of the year in person would make this specific parade a much more likely target than previous years. Which is why our presence was requested in addition to WeishenV.”

Taeyong clenched his left fist and advanced the presentation to the next slide, which showed a map of the parade route that snaked around from in front of the SM building outside the city center all the way until it reached the middle of downtown in front of the temporarily closed-off Neo Tree.

“This is a top priority operation, so all of 127—day shift and night shift—will be out in the field.” Taeyong drew attention to the small red dots on the map which designated each members’ position.

Yuta looked like he was going to say something, but Taeyong had a pretty good guess and beat him to the punch.

“It is a holiday, so there shouldn’t be any employees in the SM building anyway after they go home this evening. We’ll put the building on lockdown from tonight until the morning after the parade when we will reopen it.”

Yuta nodded once and settled back into his chair. He resumed polishing a knife.

“Everyone but myself and Mark will be doing undercover field work at different strategic points. Keep an eye out for anything unusual—including the two fugitives that Taemin’s had us looking for.”

Taeyong twisted the Neo Ring twice and pointed the red light that shot out of it toward a building above where the CEO’s announcement podium would be.

“I will be here on the roof of this shopping complex coordinating everything. Mark will be watching my back.”

Taeyong then pulled off the Neo Ring and let the projection blink off the display. Then he stepped back to the head of the conference table.

“This should be a simple operation. Obviously priority number one is to protect the CEO. If those two fugitives are spotted, taking them in is second. If anything does happen, all of WeishenV will already be on site to evacuate civilians and provide back-up if necessary.”

Taeil raised his hand like a kid in school. “Wait. If WeishenV are so involved in this, does that mean we have to have a strategy meeting with them?”

Taeyong shook his head and relief buzzed out of the group in waves.

“Kun has assured us that’s not necessary given the simplicity of the mission. He said he doesn’t even plan on telling the rest of his members that we will be there because he’s afraid it will...distract them.”

“They’ll still know we’re there because of their stupid powers.” Haechan muttered unkind names under his breath.

“Which reminds me. On a slightly less professional note,” Taeyong rubbed the back of his head, “because the SM building will be on lockdown, we won’t have access to the crash room until after the parade, so we’ll have to sleep at the dorm for the next two nights. But because WeishenV will probably know that too, we should be aware that it’s very likely that they will try to...visit us at least one of those nights.”

Haechan’s laugh was strained and humorless. “Forget WeishenV and their stupid pranks. We’ll all have to sleep in the same place as Mark?”

“Did we ever get a hold of that exorcist?” Yuta asked with childlike hope in his eyes.

“I just talk in my sleep, guys. I don’t know why you make such a big deal about it.” Mark’s look of frustration was only intensified by the huge bags under his eyes. 

Taeyong felt a little sorry for Mark. They didn’t know they’d be getting a new member a month ago, so until Taeyong could create a position for him, Mark had been relegated to free agent, on loan to both shifts or even Director Taemin himself whenever an extra hand was needed.

However, there wasn’t any particular area 127 needed another person and having a sort of gopher at their beck and call was really convenient and helpful—for the rest of 127, that was. Taeyong was still planning on fulfilling his promise to make Mark a permanent position, but he wasn’t exactly in a rush to do so. He felt guilty at how clearly exhausted the kid was, but he did great work no matter what responsibility he was given.

“You wanna know, Mark? I have recordings if you want to give it a listen. Take your pick.” Jungwoo turned his Neo Pad around to show a long list of audio files. “Try telling us we’re crazy after hearing you chanting, ‘They’re in the basement’ over and over while we’re trying to sleep.”

Taeil shivered. And Mark rolled his eyes.

“Can’t we put him in a hotel? I’m sure we could write it off as a work expense.” Yuta smiled at his own genius.

“If we’re doing that, how about _we_ sleep in the nice hotel,” Haechan then pointed to their newest member, “and _Mark_ stays in the musty vacuum repair shop?”

Taeyong hit the table like a judge’s gavel to bring order to the room that had dissolved quickly into arguments on how to keep Mark from terrifying them all while they slept. “No one’s staying in a hotel. If you feel obliged, get yourself some earplugs. If there are no further questions that are actually relevant, then this briefing is adjourned.”

Taeyong didn’t think that the room could have cleared out faster if a bomb was set off. Jungwoo, Taeil, and Haechan who were on the night shift likely went back to the crash room to catch up on their sleep. Yuta should have gone back to his desk. The only one left in the room besides Taeyong was Mark who was uploading the meeting minutes to Taeyong’s drive for their records.

When Taeyong left the conference room, he saw Johnny stepping off the elevator. He froze when he saw Taeyong.

“ _Hey, boss._ ” Johnny smiled awkwardly.

Taeyong leveled his look of disappointment toward the other. “ _I’ll have Mark forward you the minutes_.”

“ _Not necessary. Jaehyun patched my earpiece into the conference mic feed, so I heard the whole thing. Are we really all going to be staying the night at the dorm?_ ” Johnny took a loud sip from his coffee that he must have grabbed from the lobby on the 100th floor in his _huge rush_ to get to the meeting.

Taeyong’s deadpan expression turned just a bit feral, and that’s when Johnny realized what he was holding. The “oops” expression on his face was comical.

Taeyong rolled his eyes. Then he spotted the coffee cup that was already on Johnny’s desk.

The unique label boasted it as Ridin’ Coffee, an unusual brand that Johnny loudly proclaimed as being Neo City’s biggest mystery as there were no coffee shops—franchised, locally owned, or even imported—called such. It was also a mystery how a cup would magically appear on Johnny’s desk occasionally since no one in 127 would be so nice.

As Taeyong passed Johnny’s desk, he swiped the cup up and brought it to his own desk.

Johnny made a squeak of protest and finally Taeyong felt him feel actual regret through his empathic channel. Taeyong stared Johnny dead in the eyes while he drank his favorite coffee in front of him.

Johnny pouted, slumping into his desk thoroughly defeated. Mark snickered from where he sat in his desk in the far corner. He had snuck in silently just long enough to see Taeyong steal Johnny’s coffee.

Taeyong was incredibly satisfied. Though he couldn’t help but agree with Johnny that this Ridin’ Coffee company made some amazingly quality stuff. He wasn’t exactly a connoisseur and the taste of coffee frankly hardly crossed his mind so long as it gave him caffeine. He wasn’t going to be as dramatic as Johnny and say it was the best coffee in the world, but he’d admit that it was one of the best he’d had.

Taeyong slipped on his Neo Earpiece and shrugged on his blazer before swiping the coffee up again and exiting the office. He scanned his thumb on the guard’s Neo Pad, and as he waited for the elevator, he called Doyoung.

“Meeting’s over. Thanks for covering for me.”

“Lee Taeyong! Don’t you ever mute me again!”

Taeyong flinched and was immediately grateful that he wasn’t in telepathic range of him yet. Doyoung was infamous for being able to project his emotions way stronger than everyone else, and there were many on Neo City’s most wanted list that Taeyong would rather fight barehanded than deal with a sleep-deprived Doyoung.

When the elevator arrived, he stepped in, finished off the last of the Ridin’ Coffee, and took a deep breath to refocus his brain back to being a security officer. It was time to get back to work.

As he endured Doyoung’s rant, he remembered to set a reminder on his Neo Earpiece.

The earpiece beeped once to confirm the reminder had been logged and added to the million other reminders that Taeyong had set in order to keep his life some semblance of organized.

The earpiece chimed, “Reminder set: Buy earplugs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! The next chapter will focus on WayV, so get ready!
> 
> End of chapter question:  
> Which NCT127 era was your favorite?


	4. Your FACE is irregular - Love WeishenV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Beaten black and blue, licking my wounds. The repeating storyline. We come and go… Gone endlessly crazy, never giving up.” -Unbreakable by WayV

The population of Neo City never seemed too big or crowded—that is, until the entire citizenry packed into the city center for holiday festivities. Smart Manufacturing appreciation parades were at the core, informative, showcasing the latest developments in Neo Culture Technology. But the company also boasted them as a way to give back to the people, resulting in a celebration that could be described as no less than an ordeal. Extravagant parade floats swerved all over the city with performers waving and tossing out candy. And a favorite of all was the food stalls selling all kinds of unique dishes that were only available for this one day.

Lucas didn’t remember ever attending any of these parades as a child, and he certainly had never imagined that he would one day be in the parade on display as a piece of Neo Culture Technology himself. He jogged to the front of his float and waved to the crowd. A cheer erupted from the people as he flexed his muscles, soaking in every ounce of attention.

The words on the Neo Display Board behind him scrolled passed, “WeishenV: NCT enhanced super soldiers, working for the people and with the people.”

Lucas leaned over the side as he waved and felt himself lose his balance.

A hand grasped the back of his shirt and tugged. When he was steady on the float deck again, he looked bashfully over his shoulder.

“Careful,” Kun teased. “I don’t think you falling onto someone in the crowd was quite what SM meant by ‘see the super soldiers up close.’”

“You’re right. Getting too close to this gun show could be dangerous for civilians.” Lucas winked at a woman holding a basket of leeks, and she nearly fainted.

“You call that a gun show?” Ten called from the other side of the float. “This is a gun show!”

Instantly everyone on the WeishenV float got into the game, each trying to do a more ridiculous pose for the crowd than the others. Lucas thought he pretty much settled it though when he grabbed a squirming Yangyang and started bench pressing him above his head.

“Somehow I always end up here,” Yangyang sighed as Lucas lifted him higher.

“A pretty good place to be, really,” Lucas said, shifting the weight so he could balance Yangyang in one hand. “Do you even realize how many people would pay to be where you are right now?”

Yangyang hadn’t finished rolling his eyes before he disappeared in a swirl of smoke and reappeared midair a few feet away. He flailed in the air for a second and then dropped to the float deck with a thunk.

“Oh so we’re using powers now, are we?” Lucas breathed a puff of air and rode the gust to his feet. The excess wind blew past Yangyang, knocking him over again. He sat up, hair askew and flashed a laser of light from his palm into Lucas’s eyes.

“Alright. That’s enough.” Kun stepped between the two of them and pulled Yangyang to his feet. “Let’s not get too out of control here. We don’t want someone to get hurt.” He looked over his shoulder at the crowd, which was eagerly accepting finger hearts from the rest of the members.

Behind Kun’s back, Lucas shot another wisp of air at Yangyang, not willing to forfeit the last move. “Come on. That little breeze wasn’t hurting anybody.”

“It’s not you two I’m worried about.”

Lucas followed Kun’s gaze as he scanned the mass of civilians pressed up against the barricades just barely holding them back enough to allow the float to pass through.

“Let’s just keep the powers to a minimum right now. Okay?” He didn’t wait for a response before walking away. Yangyang followed, shooting another beam of light in Lucas’s face as he passed and sticking his tongue out before running away.

Lucas went to retaliate but stopped when Yangyang took shelter behind Kun whose arm was now slung over Ten’s shoulders as they waved at the people together.

The music grew louder as their float neared Neo City’s central hub. The crowd funnelled between buildings and pushed past each other like a writhing mob in attempts to cram as many people into the city center as possible.

“Alright, boys. Now it’s really showtime.” Kun called as the float rounded a corner and the Neo Tree came into view.

As far as Lucas knew, the Neo Tree was the only non-human thing to have been enhanced with NCT. Its branches cast a canopy over the entire city center, even wrapping around and growing up the surrounding buildings like vines. Not fully tree and not fully technology, its enhancements appeared a little less natural than those of WeishenV. For the most part, WeishenV looked like normal humans. But this was no normal-looking tree. The massive tree trunk weaved around metal ductwork and stray wires dangled between the leaves.

“There he is! CEO Onew!”

Lucas craned to see around the Neo Tree to where Ten was pointing behind it. On a large stage CEO Onew presented a Neo Projection showcasing the latest updates of the 14th generation of the Neo Phone.

At the sight of the CEO, all seven members of WeishenV stampeded to the edge of the float, straining to get his attention. The float jolted to one side before quickly recalibrating to account for the uneven weight distribution. Losing his footing, Lucas knocked into Winwin and started a domino effect ending with three members on the ground. Lucas pushed himself to the front of the scramble, shaking the others off as they tried to climb their way out of the bottom of the dog pile, each screaming the name of their CEO. But it wasn’t until Hendery started a “CEO” chant, which quickly evolved into a “CEO” war cry, that CEO Onew shyly acknowledged them just to shut them up.

But WeishenV was anything but quiet. Their whoops of success echoed off the buildings, and their dramatic high-fiving was nothing short of another plea to draw attention to themselves.

Amongst the chaos, Ten stepped to the side and focused on something in the distance. “Hey, hey, hey guys. Come here.” He motioned them into a huddle, yanking Hendery by the shirt collar when he tried to escape. “Who wants to play a game?”

Ten’s grin was bordering on evil and seemed to be contagious as it spread like a disease around the circle of faces as each came to the realization that one of their favorite games was about to begin.

“Are they here?” Lucas asked.

“Of course they’re here. The CEO wouldn’t come out without his prized security.” Yangyang’s tone clearly showed how “prized” he actually thought 127 was.

Xiaojun huffed and crossed his arms. “Like there could be better security than us.”

The group chorused in agreement then quieted again when Winwin voiced the question they were all wondering. “How many?”

Ten closed his eyes and focused for a moment. “Four. But I’m sure more are out there. The closer we get to the CEO...”

“I see one! I see one!” Hendery broke their huddle and ran to the back of the float, jumping up and down with excitement. “Step up your game guys. Hendery: one. Everyone else: zero.”

WeishenV scattered, each scouring the crowd for 127 members. Yangyang and Ten darted over to where Hendery was doing his victory dance, immediately questioning the credibility of his find.

Lucas blocked out their bickering and looked out over the thousands of people swarming around the Neo Tree. For only having actually met the members of 127 a handful of times, he felt like he still had them pretty much figured out. They were all  _ stealth  _ and  _ secrets _ , and to the public, they didn’t exist. 127 was good—Lucas would admit it—just not better than WeishenV, especially when on their home turf.

“I found another one,” Ten called in a sing-songy voice. He looped his arm around one of the supports of the Neo Display Board and hung off the edge of the float like the captain of a pirate ship. “Look at him trying to be covert.”

Lucas  _ did  _ look but deflated upon his inability to spot anyone even with Ten pointing one out. Unlike Hendery, no one challenged Ten’s find. With his specific power, he had an unfair advantage to finding 127 members, and they all trusted his sense.

“Hey, Johnny! Little far away from your cozy—”

Kun grabbed Ten’s arm and yanked him down, silencing whichever words Ten intended to use to end his sentence. “We can out them to each other but  _ not  _ to the public,” he hissed.

“What fun is it to best them if they don’t know we did?”

“It won’t be much fun when we get in trouble.” Kun glanced around, hoping no one paid any attention to the man Ten had shouted at. “Just...know you won in your heart or something.”

Ten looked personally offended by the lack of competition in Kun’s version of the game, but it only took him a moment to come up with a way to raise the stakes again. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Whoever doesn’t find one gets laundry duty for a month.” 

Yangyang popped his head up from where he was laying on the float deck, trying to get a closer look at people’s faces. “Since when was that a rule?”

“Since I added it just now.” Ten grinned, knowing he was already off the hook.

Lucas felt the panic well up inside of him. He often didn’t perform well under pressure, and the thought of the team’s collective dirty laundry amplified the pressure tenfold.

He scanned the crowd, watching for anybody who looked like they didn’t belong. A family sharing a tub of cotton candy—no. A teenage couple taking a selfie—no. A group of kids battling their WeishenV action figures—hey, the Lucas one was totally winning.

No signs of 127. Everybody looked normal. Except those two guys dressed in traditional garb. Or was that traditional clothing? Their long hooded cloaks swept up dust as they walked and seemed to be made of a material Lucas had never seen before. Could it be NCT?

He motioned Ten over to check. “What about them?” he asked.

Ten focused his power in the direction Lucas was pointing. “Who?”

“Those two over….” Lucas surveyed the crowd again. Cotton candy family, selfie couple, victorious Lucas action figure…. The public weaved in and out of each other, no one staying in the same place for long, but the strange pair had vanished. “Nevermind. I lost them.”

“They are pretty slippery, aren’t they?” Ten clapped him on the back before running over to Yangyang who swore he just saw one walking into a gift shop.

Lucas gripped the float’s railing, determined to spot a member of 127 before the day was done. Ten was probably right: there would be more of them nearby the CEO. The likelihood of him finding one increased with every inch closer their float drew to the stage.

The masses roared with excitement, waving banners with their names and many of them wearing t-shirts with designs of the signature “V” that was tattooed onto each of their necks. The stage lighting blinded Lucas as the WeishenV float pulled up next to the CEO. A security guard unlatched the gate and connected a ramp for them to cross.

Hendery bounded off the float first, tripping on the lip of the ramp and catching himself in a way only someone who can briefly slow down time can do.

Lucas hadn’t thought the sound of applause could have gotten any louder until the crowd screamed in approval of Hendery’s performance.

Interrupting a series of dramatic bowing, Winwin pushed Hendery along, and the rest of them filed onto the stage joining the CEO.

CEO Onew held up a hand, quieting the audience only slightly, but his voice boomed through the speakers, overwhelming any remaining noises and captivating the attention of all who were present. “I suppose everyone here is already familiar with Smart Manufacturing’s most advanced achievements in Neo Culture Technology?”

To say it was a rhetorical question was an understatement.

Lucas squinted through the lights in search of 127, but the flashing of cameras made it impossible to make out faces. The glaring lights, of course, didn’t stop him from noticing the group of fangirls screaming his name. He showed them a slight smile which grew into a laugh as they flailed and covered their faces at his acknowledgement.

Xiaojun broke his distraction and jolted his attention back to the stage and his image by leaning over and tapping him on the shoulder. “I saw the one behind us first. Pass it down,” he said through his stage smile.

Lucas whipped around less than discreetly. In the left wing of the stage, only the shoes of the 127 member were visible.

He could practically smell the sweaty laundry already. He was toast.

He relayed Xiaojun’s message to Kun and watched the group’s varied reactions as it worked its way down the line. Lucas guessed the meaning had been wildly skewed throughout their game of telephone because by the time it reached the end, Yangyang and Winwin were giggling behind their hands and Hendery was frantically trying to see something on the back of his shirt.

Clearly none of them were paying attention to the CEO’s speech, except for maybe Kun, who was simultaneously formulating the lecture he was going to give them when they got back to the dorms tonight.

“WeishenV, humanity’s real live superheros.” CEO Onew looked at them like a proud father. “We are truly honored to serve and protect Neo City. Thank you for your kind reception and for being a people who are a joy to work for.”

It was scripted and a little bit cringey, but it was true. The praise of civilians was what kept Lucas going, and he couldn’t imagine a different job or another city he would rather be in than this one.

CEO Onew gave a final wave to the crowd before retreating behind the curtain. His secretary hurried out onto the stage, replacing him at the podium. He tapped his notecards into a clean stack and cleared his throat in an unsuccessful attempt to calm the masses. But the people had lost interest as soon as the CEO had exited stage left.

The noise of the crowd completely drowned out the secretary’s voice, but he spoke anyway. Although Lucas—or anyone for that matter—heard zero of the words that came out of his mouth, he knew the general intended message: “WeishenV will now be available for autographs for those who have purchased tickets.”

Lucas stepped out of the way as the staff transformed the stage for the meet and greet. A long row of tables was set out before them, and Lucas had barely blinked before another staff person ran by, scattering a bunch of markers along the tablecloth.

“Yes!” Winwin punched the sky. “Two o’clock. Blue hat. Eating a hotdog.”

“Nice one,” Ten confirmed. “Even I hadn’t seen that one yet.”

“Who’s all left? I’m trying to sweat extra hard for them to enjoy.”

“Just Kun, Lucas, and Yang….”

“But I totally saw one!” The markers on the table jumped when Yangyang slammed his hand down. He reached past Ten and tugged on Kun’s shirt. “Ten’s lying. Make him stop.”

Kun brushed his hand off and glared at Ten. “Simmer down. Civilians are coming.”

Just then, a little boy wearing a neo pearl champagne-colored cape ran straight up to Kun and pushed his Kun action figure toward him. “You’re my favorite superhero ever! When I grow up, I wanna be in WeishenV just like you!”

Kun smiled and motioned to the boy’s cape. “Looks like you’re already a hero.”

The boy absolutely beamed as Kun signed his action figure and handed it back to him.

“Keep up the good work, Hero. WeishenV will be lucky to have you someday.” Kun ruffled the boy’s hair and watched as he ran off, waving his action figure in the air and jumping into a woman’s arms offstage.

A steady stream of fans filtered down the line, each holding a different piece of memorabilia for the members to sign.

In between autographs, Ten leaned over to Kun and whispered, “You are looking, right? Because I’m not kidding about the laundry thing.”

Kun sighed and said without looking up, “Their leader’s in the building to our right. Seventh floor. Pink curtains.”

Lucas couldn’t help but look. But he’d barely counted three floors up when Ten, looking like he had been hit with an invisible wrecking ball, nearly fell out of this chair.

“Holy...Dude! Do you feel that?” He clutched his chest as he tried to catch his breath.

“Feel what?” Kun asked.   


“That 127 member. I’ve never sensed this one before—I would have remembered. He’s crazy strong.”

Not that any of their powers were normal, but Ten’s power was strange. He called it his 7th Sense. (Lucas regretted ever asking what he referred to as his 6th Sense.) As far as Lucas understood, when they got close enough, Ten could somehow feel a 127 member’s presence. It only worked with 127, not WeishenV, not civilians. Ten said he guessed it had something to do with the way 127 was enhanced but other than that, he too was at a loss.

Lucas, as with most of WeishenV, had no ability to sense the members of 127. If he did, he’d be using it right now to save his skin. But Kun, on the other hand, ever so slightly shared this ability. He said it was only a mere fraction of what Ten could do, but Lucas would have been grateful for a fraction rather than zero right now.

Kun put the cap on his marker and set it down. He glanced at Ten’s eager face and then complied, activating his power. His eyes had only closed for a second before he jolted, shaking the whole table. His hand shot to his head in pain.

“Hey, man, are you okay?” Ten’s smile faded as Kun tried to shake off the pain.

It took all of two seconds for the rest of the group to notice their hunched over leader.

Lucas had heard from the others that Kun sometimes had problems with his powers, and that’s why he didn’t use them often. But this was his first time witnessing the effects. The first time seeing his members’ faces so serious.

Kun shuddered, and it was as if time slowed down and Hendery wasn’t the cause. He slowly lifted his head, forcing a neutral expression. “Please excuse me,” he said to the fan standing in front of him, regarding him with concern.

The tension in his arms was apparent as he pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. Taking a moment to lean against the table, he took a deep breath. Then, he looked up, smiled at his fan, and walked off stage.

Lucas found himself staring at the curtain Kun disappeared behind. A sense of security had left with him, and an uneasiness began to take root in Lucas’s stomach.

A gentle nudge to his arm, drew his attention back to the table. Xiaojun was happily interacting with a fan, smiling as he waved goodbye to her. Without dropping his façade, he turned to Lucas and whispered, “Just keep going.”

Lucas glanced down the table and saw the rest of the members doing exactly that. Kun would be fine. If no one else was freaking out, Lucas didn’t need to either. He laughed as if Xiaojun had just told him a joke and welcomed the next person in the line that was building up in front of him.

The signing wasn’t long—SM never scheduled them for more than thirty minutes; it made the tickets more valuable. After an encore of goodbyes and a promise to come see the people again soon, WeishenV stepped behind the curtain and into the privacy of the backstage area.

The atmosphere changed instantly, once out of the public eye. Winwin and Hendery locked eyes in shared concern, and Yangyang immediately started pacing.

Ten clapped his hands, snapping everyone out of it. “Relax, guys. Kun knows how to handle this type of thing. And the staff is probably already attending to him.” He flagged down a nearby staff person and asked, “Did you see where Kun went?”

The staff member’s shrug as he walked past was less than comforting.

Ten needed a moment to recover from the offense of being brushed off, so it was Xiaojun who took charge of making a plan. “This backstage area can’t be that big, and it’s not like he’s hiding. Let’s just find him ourselves.”

The six of them peeled off in search of their leader. They really were lost without him. There was certainly a more efficient way to do this, but without Kun’s guidance, they resorted to wandering without much of a plan.

Lucas had no idea where to look. If he had proved anything today, it was that he was terrible at finding people. He walked up to the first door he saw and stepped through. A faint beeping and the whirring of an electronic locking mechanism made him realize his mistake.

The Neo Pad on the wall displayed the word “ARMED” and had blanks for a six-digit passcode.

Lucas groaned and thunked his head against the wall.

Before him was a long enclosed staircase, descending as far as he could see in the dimly-lit hallway.

_ It just had to be stairs _ , Lucas thought.

He started his descent, grumpily clunking his shoes on the metal stairs and listening to their echo down the cavern. The sound bounced quite a way further than he expected, and he sighed, knowing this was no quick walk out. The further he burrowed underground, the colder the air felt, which was an unusual sensation for him. He was the one usually giving people chills with his powers not the other way around.

It was when the ground flattened out and the walls transitioned from a lightweight metal material to a dirt tunnel that Lucas finally realized where he was. This wasn’t his exit. It was the CEO’s.

SM had a system of underground tunnels connecting all major landmarks in the Neo Zone, like the Neo Tree and the SM building. These tunnels were typically reserved for the higher ups in the company to safely and quickly travel between locations. 127 sometimes used them too, whenever they actually ventured out into the city, but WeishenV almost never came down here.

Lucas had seen part of the schematics once in the 127 dorm while involved in an extensive prank. It hadn't looked too complicated. He just had to follow the tunnels until he found an exit. How hard can it be?

But when he turned the first corner and saw a six-way fork in the road, his optimism fled.

Lucas did an about face. To heck with his pride. He was going back up there to bang on that door and face the humiliation of someone letting him back in.

He had only taken one step back in the direction he came when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He froze, assuring himself there couldn’t be ghosts down here. And besides, he had  _ super powers _ . Literally nothing could hurt him...right?

He peered into the hall on his right, eyes landing on a figure curled up on the floor about a hundred feet away.

Lucas cautiously stepped forward, moving closer to the hunched over form. As its features came into view, Lucas’s eyes grew wide in silent recognition.

His leader sat with one shoulder leaned against the dirt wall, head lolling from one side to the other.

“Kun?” A tremor of fear surfaced in Lucas’s voice.

Kun turned his head at break-neck speed. His eyes glowed fierce and red.

Lucas stumbled backward and steadied himself on the wall behind. Only then did he notice the claw marks dragging across the wall, ending at Kun and his dirt caked fingers. Only then did he realize the two of them were almost completely in the dark with most of the light fixtures destroyed and the few remaining dangling by stray wires, flickering. Only then did he see the thin layer of frost expanding along the floor with Kun at the epicenter.

Kun launched himself at Lucas, frozen crystal in his hand like a dagger. He planted the crystal in the wall where Lucas had been standing just seconds before.

Lucas ran, using his wind to push himself forward faster. But the tunnel around him rumbled, and the earth slammed shut in front of him, sealing off his exit. He turned to see Kun’s outstretched hand and an aura of red glowing around him.

“Kun! It’s me! Lucas!” he pleaded as he dove for cover from the incoming fireball. He forced as much air as he could away from him in an outward blast, just barely blowing the fireball off course.

Kun redirected Lucas’s wind straight back at him, flinging him into the wall and landing him in a crumpled heap next to the remains of the burning rock.

Adrenaline pushed down the pounding of his head and the aching of his body. He scrambled to find his footing, but found himself slipping in a thick pool of mud. The once dry hallway was now something akin to a swamp.

Kun conjured water from nowhere, blasting it in Lucas’s face and soaking the ground. He walked forward in a slow approach, watching his prey squirm in his trap.

Lucas fought to free his limbs from the suction of the mud, but strong as he was, pulling alone wasn’t going to be enough. He directed the air around him into the mud, using the air bubbles to break the surface tension. Then he slipped a hand free and grabbed Kun’s ankle. He yanked him off his feet and onto an even playing field.

The two of them struggled in the slime, each trying to get the upper hand. Above them, a light fixture burst, raining sparks and glass into the fight. The hall surged with electricity, and in the flash, Kun disappeared and the lights went out.

Lucas crawled out of the mud and used the wall to climb to his feet, holding the remains of the broken fluorescent tube light like a weapon. He whipped around, listening for Kun in the dark, but his own panicked breathing blocked out any other noise as air rapidly pumped in and out of his lungs.

He felt his way along the wall, sliding his hand across the grooves Kun had dug in the dirt with his fingers. The crunch of glass under his own shoes made him jump, and he ran again, with no option to go back the way he came and no idea where this tunnel led.

He was running—escaping—but when he blinked, time hiccuped, and Kun’s hand was around his throat. Lucas couldn’t remember how he went from running to choking, but all he knew now was that his face felt like it was about to explode.

He sputtered, clawing at Kun’s grip on his neck, his vision quickly darkening on the edges. Through the faint glow of red surrounding Kun, Lucas saw a piece of broken glass remove itself from a cut on Kun’s forehead. It hovered in the air, floating next to Kun like a pet as new flesh grew over the injury.

Kun’s eyes were angry. His expression determined. But his cheeks wet with tears as he gruffly choked out the word, “Help….”

If Lucas could have screamed, he would have. The pressure squeezed his brain until it was too dense to shrink any further, and his arms fell limp to his sides.

It was a calm voice—the voice of an angel—that saved him. Lucas barely heard the gentle command, “stop,” but at the single word, Kun dropped him to the ground and vanished in a puff of smoke.

Air flooded Lucas’s lungs. His violent coughing echoed down the chamber. Breathing was his only thought, and each breath felt like relief, even if 50% of what he inhaled was dust from the tunnel floor. His head was spinning. The pressure was gone, but organized thought had yet to return.

“Director! Please!”

Lucas heard Kun’s desperate cry echo down the tunnel.

At the sound of footsteps coming toward him, he scrambled for limb control. But his body refused to listen, still upset about the temporary lapse in oxygen.

Something touched his head.

Lucas liked red. It was calm and relaxing and somehow made his pain and panic disappear. He leaned into the feeling, swaying to the one-worded lullaby it coaxed him toward.

_ Sleep. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! We appreciate it. We're excited about the positive reception of this fic!
> 
> End of chapter question: What is your favorite WayV moment?


	5. Same Ground but Different Skies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Careless, careless. Shoot anonymous, anonymous.” -MAMA by EXO

Night had fallen on Neo City an hour ago, and Baekhyun and Kai made use of the shadows. 

Baekhyun peered around the corner of a building and counted four armed guards and seven infrared security cameras.  _ “I don’t think this is a good idea, Kai.” _

He slipped back behind the cover of the building and found himself standing alone.  _ “Kai?” _

At the crackle of a guard’s radio, he tensed, resisting the urge to turn invisible.  _ I’m just a civilian, _ he reminded himself.  _ No guard would pay attention to a civilian on an evening stroll. _

Baekhyun casually leaned against the wall, checking around the corner again like a tourist taking simple interest in the strange tree in the middle of the square. He all but fell over when he saw Kai, completely out in the open, power walking straight toward the restricted area surrounding said tree.

A guard stepped in front of him, hand on his weapon. “This area is off limits to civilians.”

“Oh there you are.” Baekhyun hadn’t heard his own voice in so long he almost didn’t recognize it. But seeing as he now held the attention of all four of the guards, the sentence must have come from his mouth. “So sorry. My brother gets lost so easily.”

The fake laugh he attempted was something his vocal cords were not prepared to do. It came out as a high pitched squeak, which he immediately slapped a hand over. He flashed an innocent grin to the guard glaring down at them, then grabbed Kai’s arm and shuffled the both of them across the street and into another alley.

Baekhyun waited until they were out of sight before whirling on Kai.  _ “Have you lost it? What were you thinking?” _

Kai pouted for a moment before shooting his response.  _ “I’m getting to that tree tonight with your help or without it.” _

Baekhyun flinched at the spike of red flowing through their empathic connection. He stepped back, curbing his own frustration. He couldn’t risk the Red Force taking hold of him too.

_ “All I know is that when I touched that tree,”  _ Kāi threw his hand back, gesturing in the direction they just came. _ “I heard Luhan. And I’m going to hear him again.” _

The determination in his voice matched the unsettling red haze taking form in his eyes.

Baekhyun had spent the last 5 years trying to learn how to talk Kāi down from these Red Force attacks, and vice versa, but the two of them had yet to find anything consistently successful.

_ “You’re right. You will.” _ Baekhyun affirmed Kāi’s ambitions. Then, since reasoning with him was never going to work, he moved to the distraction technique.  _ “But you’ll need your full strength. Let’s get dinner first. You’re hungry, right?” _

These were not the correct words.

Kāi scowled and crossed his arms.  _ “Like you would understand.” _

It wasn’t the words that hurt so much as the cluster of sharp emotions attached to them.

Baëkhyun sent his own jab of red straight back.  _ “Of course I understand. I’m the only one who understands.” _

_ “No, you don’t.” _

Baëkhyun grabbed Kāi’s shoulder, forcing him to look him in the eye.  _ “Don’t be such a child. I heard it too. I heard the same cry for help.” _

Kāi threw his hand off and pushed Baëkhyun away.  _ “You don’t get it, do you? This wasn’t just a simple ‘Help me.’ It wasn’t even a complex ‘Help us.’” _

_ “I know! I….” _

_ “‘Kai. Help us.’”  _ Kai repeated Luhan’s only message. He slid down the wall, holding his head in his hands.  _ “I’ve never heard my own name called with such desperation.” _

The Red Force flew out of Baekhyun’s mind, overwhelmed by the sadness crippling his heart. He had sensed Kai’s emotions thousands of times before, but the current mess the two of them were exchanging between their empathic connection was uninterpretable.

_ “Kai, I….” _

“I get it that you guys are newbies, but this is embarrassing.”

Baekhyun jumped at the audible voice and took a defensive stance in front of Kai as he scrambled to his feet.

The stranger in front of them shook his head, amused by their reaction to his sudden presence. The large black “V” tattooed on his neck was more than familiar. The symbol had been plastered all over the city earlier that afternoon. He leaned in closer and whispered, “Even Yangyang IDed you two. Are you sure you’re 127?”

“No,” Kai blurted. “We aren’t...You’re confused…”

“Uh-huh. Right.” He ushered them out of the alley and onto the street. “Your rock solid cover is blown. You’re our captives now.”

Baekhyun sensed a surge of panic from Kai and felt Kai’s hand on his sleeve, preparing to teleport them out of there.

_ “Wait.” _ Baekhyun pulled away. He wasn’t ready to reveal their powers until he was sure they were completely compromised. He had been a captive before. Escape had been so near impossible that it had taken the combined power of twelve Legends to just barely squirm their way free. This situation was different. It almost seemed that he and Kai could simply walk away at any moment. If their so-called captor really knew who they were, things would be a lot less chummy as he escorted them to the entrance to a fried chicken restaurant.

The bell on the door dinged as they passed through. The restaurant was empty save the cook behind the counter and one occupied table seating four patrons and a mountain of chicken. One of the men stopped mid-bite and pointed at them with a drumstick, “Was I right? I was right, wasn’t I? You can’t deny it this time, Ten. Everyone here is a witness.”

“I’m not denying anything.” The man who had brought Baekhyun and Kai shrugged and dragged a chair up to the table. “Too bad that game ended hours ago.”

“What?” the other shrieked. The table jostled at his outburst, causing Mount Chicken to sway. All five of them instinctively reached out to steady the tower.

“Be careful, Yangyang!” shouted another. Just like that an argument about eating chicken off the floor and the validity of the five-second rule erupted between them.

_ “Should we run?” _ Kai’s telepathic message shook Baekhyun out of the scene in front of him.

_ “I don’t think we need to.” _

It didn’t take long for the argument to devolve into someone threatening to dry chicken grease stains onto all of their clothes. Baekhyun didn’t quite follow the train of thought that led them to that point but decided not to question it.

When the volume grew to something that shouldn’t have been possible for such a small group of people, one of them shook his head and removed himself from the table. He walked over to Kai and Baekhyun who were now both awkwardly taking interest in the floor until the family feud subsided and held out his hand in greeting. “I know you guys have read my file and could probably regurgitate my personal details more accurately than I could do myself, but this is technically our first time meeting, so hi. I’m Xiaojun.”

Baekhyun was glad for the introduction. He had no idea what file Xiaojun was talking about, but he nodded as if he did know and shook his hand. An almost familiar sensation of heat radiated up his arm at the touch. Baekhyun furrowed his brow, trying to place the feeling it reminded him of.

Kai was less successful at hiding his reaction to the heat. He jerked away from Xiaojun’s handshake as soon as they touched.

“Oh sorry,” Xiaojun said. “I should have warned you. Hot hands.” He held a hand up to a window, and the glass started to fog up.

Kai couldn’t keep his jaw from dropping.  _ “Did he just…?” _

_ “I saw it too,” _ Baekhyun confirmed.

Xiaojun studied the two of them curiously for a moment like he, too, had a mystery of dots he was trying to connect. He shrugged it off and grabbed two more chairs, pushing them over to their table. “We know you guys are busy, but humor us. Get to know us a bit. You’ll find there’s a lot more to us than facts memorized from a sheet of paper.”

Baekhyun wasn’t sure how much he wanted to get to know them, but there were certainly some things  _ about _ them he was now interested in. He took a seat between Xiaojun and Ten and nodded at Kai to sit across from him.

Kai hesitated. The chair in question was currently inaccessible, sitting in the middle of two members engaged in battle. One of them held the other relentlessly in a headlock while he fruitlessly fought to wriggle out.

Ten tapped on the table. “Hendery, Yangyang, break it up.”

“Like I have a choice,” Yangang whined as he tried to squirm his way free.

Hendery released him without warning, and he flew out of his chair onto the floor.

Kai quickly took his seat while the chair was open, but Baekhyun could sense his discomfort with his location.

Yangyang rubbed his neck and glared at Hendery as he sat down.

“You guys barely made a dent in this while I was gone.” Ten grabbed two pieces of chicken off the mountain and set them in front of Kai and Baekhyun. Then he slapped a golden credit card on the table. “Dig in. It’s on us.”

Kai didn’t need to be told twice. He dove for the chicken like it had been days since he had eaten even though in reality it had only been a couple hours.

“So you two got names?” Ten asked.

Baekhyun and Kai shared a cautious glance.

“Ah. I see Grand Master Taeyong has already grilled you guys on the importance of secrecy.”

There were a few “boos” from the peanut gallery sitting on either side of Kai.

Ten leaned back in his chair and comfortably folded his arms. “Well none of that stuffy secret nonsense applies to us. When you’re with WeishenV, you can relax. We won’t tell the rest of them you let down your guard a bit. Promise.” He held up a hand as proof of his honesty, and the rest of the group followed, holding their hands up with varying levels of enthusiasm. “We’re pretty good at keeping secrets too, you know.”

Little secrets—maybe. But Baekhyun doubted they could be trusted with something as big as his and Kai’s identities.

“I see,” Ten said, disappointed by their silence. “That’s okay. You’ll warm up to us. They always warm up to us.” He nodded and some kind of inside joke seemed to pass around the table.

“Until then, what should we call them?” Yangyang twirled a chicken bone between two fingers before dropping it on his plate.

“I vote to call him the Chicken King.” Hendery gestured to nearly half of the remains of Mount Chicken piled up in front of Kai. “Jeez. Are they not feeding you guys over in 127?”

Kai shifted in his seat and lowered the drumstick from his mouth. “Sorry.”

“Are you kidding me?” Hendery put another piece of chicken on Kai’s plate. “Even Lucas can’t pack it away like that and that boy can eat. If you’re going to give him a record to break, you better go all the way.”

“You too, Lightweight.” Yangyang pushed a piece of chicken into Baekhyun’s hand.

Baekhyun glanced between the new drumstick in his hand and the one with only a single bite taken out of it sitting on his plate. His stomach protested, but Baekhuyn knew it was all talk and no action. He had been force feeding himself food he didn’t want to eat for months and had kept it all down. This chicken would be no different. He took a bite and tried to think about something else.

“Really. Eat as much as you guys want.” Ten looked with equal concern between Baekhuyn’s two bites and Kai’s pile of bones which were currently being counted up by Hendery and Yangyang. “We get a mean discount here. Our CEO swears by this chicken, and he has us on his family discount plan.”

Hendery stood from the table suddenly. “I’m counting thirty-three bones in this pile,” he announced. “Did this man really just eat thirty-three pieces of chicken?”

“I counted thirty-four!” Yangyang shouted.

“All hail the Chicken King!”

“All hail the Chicken King!”

Kai shushed them and frantically glanced around, embarrassed even though they were the only ones in the shop. He looked to Baekhun for help from the dramatic bowing and royal wailing taking place around him.

The man sitting on the other side of Xiaojun smacked his plastic cup of ice on the table like a gavel until silence ensued.

Baekhyun hadn’t heard his name yet or even heard him make any noise at all up until now. He had mostly just followed the conversation silently, intermittently looking over Xiaojun’s shoulder, who had been buried in his Neo Phone since he had sat down.

Ten glanced around the table, uncomfortable with the sudden silence. “Did you have something to say, Winwin?”

“No,” he said. “But I think Xiaojun does.”

Xiaojun looked up from his Neo Phone, startled.

Winwin motioned to the phone and then around the table, urging Xiaojun to share whatever it was that he had been so invested in for the last ten minutes.

“Well…. I couldn’t help but notice….” Xiaojun glanced at Baekhyun and then down to his phone screen. “You look eerily similar to the final boss from Power.” He turned his phone around and showed a hyper-realistic cartoon photo of a man who not only resembled Baekhuyn but looked almost identical to him in every way.

“No way!” Yangyang dove across the table, snatching the phone and holding it up next to Baekhyun’s face.

“Okay. That’s freaky,” said Hendery.

“Freakin’ awesome!” Yangyang swiped to the next picture and let out a high-pitched squeal. “Are you a cosplayer? Please tell me you’re a cosplayer?”

Baekhyun had barely gotten a glimpse of the photo himself, but he had to admit the brief features he did see held an uncanny, almost disturbing, resemblance to him.

Kai saw it too. He stared wide-eyed at the picture as if he expected it to start speaking.  _ “That’s not really you, right?” _

Before Baekhyun had time to answer, Xiaojun plucked the phone back away from Yangyang and began tapping it again. “And he’s not the only one.” He held up the screen once more, this time with a picture of Kai drawn in a similar style.

Yangyang spit out his drink and collapsed into a coughing fit on the table.

It was Kai who reached for the phone this time. He pinched the screen to zoom, and Baekhyun felt the existential crisis picking up speed in his mind.  _ “This isn’t really  _ me,  _ right?” _

Baekhyun took the phone away before Kai’s thoughts spiraled too far. He tapped the screen then asked, “Who are these guys?”

“Are you kidding me?” Yangyang said in between coughs and Ten pounding him on the back. “Don’t even try to play dumb. I’ve literally seen a VR headset for the Neo Gaming System charging at the 127 dorm.”

Baekhyun’s level of confusion was reaching its limit. Power? Neo Gaming System? And what the heck was this “127” everyone kept talking about? Some kind of club?

“Calm down, Yangyang.” Ten rescued Baekhyun and Kai from having to come up with something to say. “Look at them. They have no idea what you are talking about. The CEO probably gave them a Neo Gaming System too. But can you imagine 127 actually playing it?”

“It was  _ charging _ . Why would they charge it if they weren't going to use it?”

The conversation quickly descended into another argument, this one with Kai attempting to act as a mediator, seeing as he was caught right in the middle of it.

On the quieter side of the table, Xiaojun pulled up a new picture and leaned closer to Baekhyun so they could hear each other over the noise. “You play as this robot, RF-05.”

Baekhyun studied the robot in the picture. He had played his fair share of video games while he was on Earth before the eclipse restored most of his memories, but he had never seen a protagonist quite as strange as this one-armed robot.

“RF-05’s planet is under attack, so you have to travel to each of the twelve regions to defeat the villains and save the universe.”

“And these guys who look like me and...him?” He gestured at Kai who had shrunk into his chair as far as he could to stay out of the line of fire.

“They’re two of the bosses.” Xiaojun flicked back to the image that looked like Kai. “He’s the eighth boss, Jongin. And your guy…”

The picture of Baekhyun lit up on the screen again.

“He’s the twelfth and final boss. He doesn’t really have a name. The game never gave him one. You’ll understand why once you play. But most people just call him ‘Anonymous.’”

Baekhyun had to remind himself not to be offended at his doppelganger’s lack of name. What kind of character doesn’t have a name? It seemed kind of careless on the game developer’s part.

The commotion around Kai subsided when Yangyang crossed his arms in retreat. “Fine,” he said. “Maybe they haven’t played it yet since they’re new. But that’s nothing we can’t remedy this very second.”

He stood and grabbed Kai’s arm. “Whaddaya say, Jongin? Should we go play through a level right now?”

Kai stuttered, failing to form words.

“Great! Let’s go.” He pulled Kai to his feet and toward the door.

Baekhyun stood a little too fast. He hurried over to Kai’s side, not willing to watch him get dragged away right before his eyes.

Yangyang shook off the sudden urgentness of Baekhyun’s actions and held open the door. “See ya, losers. Me and the cosplayers have important business to attend to.”

Before walking out the door and into the city, Baekhyun and Kai pulled their masks up over their faces. Taemin was tracking them with every piece of technology in his repertoire. The more covered they could be, the better.

The door dinged again behind them as Hendery came rushing out to catch up. The others followed a few seconds later but in much less of a hurry.

Nightlife in Neo City was much different than Baekhyun remembered. While he was on Earth, he had longed to be home on EXO Planet. Now that he was here, he longed for his home even more. He knew that change was inevitable—he had watched the planet grow and develop for thousands of years. But the rapid transformation that had taken place during the sixteen years he had been marooned on Earth was something he never could have predicted.

The city in which he stood right now had been nothing more than a slum the last time he saw it. A street market had been the main exchange of currency, and children had played hide-and-seek in the alleys. The technological boom was overwhelming to say the least.

Baekhyun watched a Neo Advertisement Board change its display from a commercial for the latest Neo Phone to a picture that read, “Happy 10th Anniversary, Smart Manufacturing!”

Smart Manufacturing—that company was new too. And Neo Culture Technology. Today’s parade had been pretty informative, but Baekhyun was still struggling to wrap his head around the idea.

How was it that technology advanced so quickly here? EXO Planet and Earth were twin planets. They had always developed at the same rate. So why the sudden divergence?

“Guys…” Xiaojun’s voice was smaller than it had been before. “Are you sure we shouldn’t stay out a little longer?”

The constant background noise of bickering silenced causing Baekhyun to be suddenly aware of how much he appreciated the sound of peace.

Ten kicked a piece of gravel which bounced along the sidewalk and rolled to a stop a few yards away. “I’m telling you guys, they’re fine. Kun probably just went to the hospital. From what I understand, those headaches he gets from power build-up are no joke. And Lucas is just lost somewhere. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

For as nonchalant as Ten sounded, Baekhyun empathically sensed high levels of distress radiating off of him. Most of the time, Baekhyun didn’t pay much attention to the emotions he sensed from humans. But when a person’s emotions didn’t match their words, it was a pretty good indicator that they were lying.

Kai had always been hypersensitive to these things. He looked between the faces trying to understand the sudden heavy atmosphere. Seeming to forget that he and Baekhyun were not the people this group thought they were, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

Xiaojun slid his hands into his pockets and glanced around the mostly quiet city street. “What are you guys doing out in the city tonight? Is there something strange going on?”

“Uh...well...we were just...you know…” An excellent cover story by Kai.

“It’s okay. I figured you wouldn’t tell us. Just thought I’d ask.”

Ten swooped in to recover the mood. “Lucas is a six-foot-tall celebrity with super powers. There is no hiding someone who stands out as much as he does. The fans will find him, if they haven’t already, and all we’ll have to do is follow their Neostagram posts like breadcrumbs.”

Xiaojun chuckled, seemingly comforted by the thought.

Baekhyun felt a wave of relief flood out from Kai’s end at his successful diversion of attention. But the relief receded almost as soon as it came.

_ “Uh oh.” _ Kai stopped in his tracks.

He tried to sound casual as he spoke to the others. “Maybe we should go a different way.”

Hendery followed Kai’s gaze to the security checkpoint ahead. “Oh, that’s right. Don’t you guys run on rooftops or something to get around?” He slung an arm around Kai’s shoulders and guided him forward again. “Don’t worry about it. We know the guards, so we fastpass straight through.”

Baekhyun grabbed the sleeve of Kai’s shirt and tugged him back. “Yeah, no. We’re going to head a different way. It was nice meeting you. Thanks for the chicken. I’m sure we’ll see you around.”

Hendery pulled Kai to himself again like he was a toy he was unwilling to share. This time Yangyang latched on too, hanging on Kai’s other arm.

Baekhyun gripped Kai’s shoulders, ready to start a full on tug-of-war with Kai in the middle. But as soon as he got close enough, Hendery and Yanyang both smirked and pulled Baekhyun into their huddle, smashing him and Kai together.

“Group hug,” Yangyang called as he held the squirming pair in place.

As if it were practiced, Ten and Xiaojun held them in from behind, and the whole mass shuffled forward as one big clump, Winwin orbiting around them with a single finger in contribution.

Baekhyun fought the hold, kicking at their ankles and wriggling his arms, but his struggle was to no avail. They restrained him with little effort. Not that he had fought many humans before, but he would have expected to have been the stronger party.

He shook Kai who had fallen limp from panic in front of him.  _ “If we get separated, meet in the alley behind Cafe Universe.” _

_ “We should have run before,” _ Kai whimpered.

Baekhyun could just  _ feel _ the cameras recording him and sending video footage of his face directly to Taemin. He dropped his chin, hoping his hair would cover his eyes, but it would be no use if he had to use his powers to get out of here.

Yangyang flung open the door to the checkpoint, and the group squeezed through the doorframe into a small room. A security officer stood behind a counter, busy confirming a civilian’s identity with his Neo Pad, and a second guard, uniform complete with sunglasses and a gun, stood watch at the exit.

Baekhyun held his breath.

“Hey, Heechul.” Hendery waved at the first guard.

The guard looked up from the Neo Pad and replied, “Hey, guys. Headed home for the night?”

“Yep. We’ve got some serious gaming in our future.”

“Ah, too bad I’m on duty tonight. We’re never online at the same...hey, wait a second. Who are those guys?” He hurried out from behind the counter, eyes trained on Kai and Baekhyun.

Baekhyun concentrated his energy, preparing to summon a flash of light bright enough to momentarily blind all of them but was cut short when Ten clapped him on the shoulder and said “No worries. They’re with us.”

“Just making sure.” The security officer shrugged and returned to his post behind the counter. “Message me next time you guys play. I could use some help with the Loey level.”

The door guard stepped aside. “Have a good evening, sirs.”

And with that simple exchange, they walked out the other side, free. The door closed behind them with a heavy thud, locking the guards and their guns and cameras inside. Outside the city center the streetlights were dimmer and the city sounds calmer. They walked in that calm stillness for a moment before Ten spoke, “Man, you two  _ really _ need to loosen up.”

Yangyang and Hendery both burst out laughing.

“Are you kidding? I don’t think Jongin could be any more loose than he is right now.” Yangyang nodded at Kai whose feet were dragging in the dirt as he and Hendery supported his whole weight pulling him forward.

Ten and Xiaojun backed off, and Baekhyun felt a whoosh of air return to his lungs. He pulled away from the group immediately, holding out his arms, ready to fight the next person who touched him.

Ten held up his hands in surrender to Baekhyun’s glare. “See what I mean. Relax.”

“Hey, he wasn’t as bad as Yuta was,” Winwin piped up from behind.

The whole group hummed in agreement, reminiscing on some epic battle ending with two fat lips, a bloody nose, and a black eye.

_ “Did we...did we really…” _ Kai’s empathic channel had flatlined long ago, and his words echoed in Baekhyun’s mind like sounds in a hollow cave.  _ “Did we just  _ walk _ through Taemin’s high security checkpoint?” _

Baekhyun’s own thoughts were racing. He checked over his shoulder again at the door that was slowly growing farther away in the distance, then glanced at the circle of men casually walking next to him. He knew Kai had no more of an answer than he did, but he couldn’t help but ask the question.  _ “Who  _ are _ these guys?” _

The further they trekked from the city center the darker the streets seemed to feel. Most people were asleep for the night, and the handful of those still wandering the streets were either headed home or didn’t have one.

Baekhyun’s eyes were drawn to the only well lit building on this side of the checkpoint. The giant black skyscraper loomed higher than all the rest. Flood lights shined like the bat signal all around it, casting shadows that dripped like slime down the front of the tower.

Xiaojun nodded at the building and said, “Our place isn’t too far from SM, so come visit us whenever you like.”

They turned down a dimly lit sidestreet and continued until they reached a smaller, older-looking building, fenced off from the rest. Its two stories were an embarrassment compared to the highrises surrounding it, but while it’s neighbors looked stiff and plain, this building had a lived-in, if not run-down, look. Colored ribbons and flowers weaved all around the fence, and stuffed animals were set up on display by the front gate. A handwritten sign on lime green poster board was zip-tied to the gate. It read, “Thank you, WeishenV! We ♡ you!”

Hendery ran up and scanned his finger on the panel inset in the fence. The screen buzzed in approval and unlocked the gate.

The small yard on the other side was surprisingly well kept. They followed the sidewalk path to the front door where Hendery was this time scanning his whole hand.

“We present to you Chez WeishenV,” he said over the beeping and whirring of the unlocking door. He turned the handle and pushed, revealing a dark foyer inside.

Baekhyun suddenly felt all too close to them again when they shuffled into the entryway and struggled to remove their shoes in the same tiny space.

Yangyang tripped out of the mess in his socks and slid his hand along the wall until he found the light switch. “Ah, home sweet home.”

Baekhyun had been pushed and shoved and knocked into and elbowed and generally had his personal space invaded so many times that night he was about ready to pop. Without much choice, he was sucked into the current of people moving into the hallway and was somehow unsurprised when they all knocked into each other three stooges-style with Yangyang in the front, blocking the entryway to the next room.

“What’s the hold up, Yang…?” Ten cut off mid sentence and pushed past the human blockade. “Lucas! What happened? Are you okay?”

Baekhyun had to stand on his tiptoes to see between heads and into the dark room.

A man covered in dirt sat stiffly on a couch and stared straight ahead at the wall in front of him. His hair stuck out at odd angles and a white bandage wrapped around his right arm from his shoulder to his fingertips.

“Lucas.” Ten gently shook him by the shoulders, breaking his trance. 

His voice came out gruff when he spoke. “I’m fine.” He turned his head to look at Ten directly. The shadows on his face moved, allowing the light from the hallway to reveal the long red bruises wrapping around his neck.

At the sound of Lucas’s gravelly voice, Ten grabbed a stray water bottle off the floor, removed the lid, and held it up to him.

Lucas rejected it and tried to speak again. “I’m fine...but Kun is not okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! We appreciate it!
> 
> If you were stranded on a deserted island, choosing from members of EXO and WayV:  
> 1\. Who would you want to be stranded with?  
> 2\. Who stranded you there?  
> 3\. Who saves you?
> 
> Jade and Cixalea:  
> 1\. Kun  
> 2\. Ten  
> 3\. Xiumin


	6. Reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “At some point, ‘reality’ became a word with limits. In reality, our imaginations and endless possibilities become trapped within this limit. This dream lab is created to break these limits in reality. This dream lab is created for you.” — Narrator in “NCTMentary Ep 5 Back to Reality”

The SM building looked very ominous without any lights on. It grated against a part of Taeyong’s soul for it to be so lifeless. There was always something happening in the building. Like data crunchers on a floor getting coffee in the lobby to push them through working overtime. Or some group in R&D who needed just one more hour before they had the blueprint for the next Neo Pad perfected. Even in the earliest hours of the morning Taeyong could look on the monitors over Jungwoo’s shoulder and see Haechan making his rounds. For someone who knew the pulse of this building so well, for it to be still and dead was eerie beyond all reason. It made him feel like he’d failed somehow.

He sent Mark with Doyoung and the rest of the night shift members through the maintenance entrance to reactivate the building from that side while Taeyong took the day shift members through the main entrance to reopen the more public areas.

After Taeyong scanned his thumb into the Neo Display outside the building’s main doors, Jaehyun scanned his to turn the building lights back on. It would have been a relief if not for the fact that it illuminated two figures in the lobby walking toward them.

Yuta was always quick on the draw. His Neo Cryo Gun was unholstered from under his jacket and laser locked on the first of the two immediately. Taeyong saw Yuta’s index finger constrict on the trigger, but the gun locked up upon registering the biosignature of who it was, the NCT being faster than even 127’s enhanced eyes.

“Director?” Johnny’s voice echoed too well in the empty lobby.

Yuta lowered his weapon immediately. The gun hummed to signal that it had deactivated the automatic safety and had returned to its default mode.

“Did you boys enjoy the parade?”

No one in 127 had a response to that. Taeyong wasn’t sure the director was expecting one. Besides, his attention was on the person next to the director.

Kun looked haggard to say the least. He always carried himself with a professionalism that Taeyong thought most of 127 could stand to emulate, but now he looked like he’d just survived a drowning. Taeyong found himself instinctively looking for bruises or other tells that would have proven what sort of fight had rendered him to such a state, but he found none.

“If you would show Kun the door, please.”

WeishenV didn’t have authorization to access anything in the SM building, which left Taeyong to escort Kun in and out after WeishenV’s leader had his monthly meeting with the director. However, there was no reason for them to be having a meeting while the building was on lockdown.

Kun shuffled over toward Taeyong, and the two walked toward the main doors. Kun made no excuse as to his appearance. He barely acknowledged Taeyong was even there.

It didn’t sit right with Taeyong to let Kun leave on his own on the streets like this. It was like asking a completely wasted friend to walk themselves home. The two had been closer back when they were the only two members of the SM security team, but ever since their groups had grown and their responsibilities had made them busier, Taeyong hadn’t had a conversation with Kun that was anything past professional discourse in years. Were they even still friends? Taeyong thought it’d be a little personal to ask if Kun was feeling alright.

Taeyong let the door slide shut after Kun left, and he tried to shove his concerns out of his mind. Kun was a super soldier. He could handle himself.

Taeyong caught up to the others in his team who had just finished disarming all the building’s security settings from their strict lockdown modes back to their normal night modes. Once it was time for most employees to start arriving for the work day, the system would switch to day mode automatically and start looking a little more like the building Taeyong knew.

Director Taemin and all the 127 day shift members were waiting near the elevator entrance. On lockdown mode, the elevators were held at the highest floor in their respective shaft, so it would take a few minutes for the elevator to descend to the lobby.

A maintenance door down the hall opened, and 127 instinctively brought their hands to their weapons until they could identify the source of the sound. They relaxed when they heard Haechan’s loud voice. It was clear that the night shift members of 127 had finally arrived, presumably after completing their half of the task and joining the rest of them in front of the elevator.

Mark gave Director Taemin a wide berth and stood behind Taeyong as he waited. Taeyong had confronted Mark in private about this habit, but Mark denied doing it on purpose. He unconsciously tried to keep away from the director.

When the elevator arrived, everyone scanned their thumbs and boarded. Inside, it was a little packed, but they were able to fit all 10 of them. Taeyong was opposed to having large elevators as bottlenecking the number of people who could use it at one time could help keep the building more secure. However, he was overridden by CEO Onew who wanted to make sure that he could bring large investment groups up to entertain on the top floor at the same time.

The ride up was awkward. Taeyong could feel Haechan’s restlessness at the silence vibrating down his empathic connection like a mosquito flying near his ear. Mark was also uncomfortable though Taeyong could see that more in his stance and in the tension in his closed hands.

Taeyong should have tried to comfort them or at least commended Haechan for holding himself back from making small talk with their director. But his thoughts kept jumping back to Kun and the director and the strangeness of it all.

Why were Kun and Director Taemin meeting while the building was on lockdown? And even more curiously, how did they get in without Taeyong being notified? The director would have had the clearance to enter the building under just about any circumstances _but_ lockdown. That was the point of being on lockdown. And if someone even attempted to scan into the building, it should have stayed locked and sent a slew of alerts—one of course to himself as leader of 127 and two more to Yuta and Taeil as the ones who took care of high-level security threats. Yet neither of those things happened.

There was a hole in Taeyong’s security, and he needed to find it immediately.

“Ah, I’ve been meaning to ask.” Director Taemin breaking the silence as they transferred elevators was more than jarring. “Did anyone spot those two fugitives during the parade?”

“No, sir,” Taeyong answered automatically.

“Since the building’s been on lockdown, we still have to go over the past two-day’s worth of security footage from the city checkpoints that we’ve set up. Jungwoo’s AI program has been running through the security feeds the whole time, so it might have picked something up.” Jaehyun sent a glance to Jungwoo who nodded proudly.

Taeyong was grateful that Jaehyun at least offered something.

“Please look over it carefully. They are a high priority threat to this city and need to be apprehended as soon as possible.”

“Is that why you were meeting with Kun, sir?” Yuta’s question was a little bold, but Taeyong was glad someone asked it. “Are you involving WeishenV in tracking them down too?”

Surprise radiated out from the night shift members as they had no idea Kun had even been in the building since he had left before they arrived.

“Aw. Are you jealous of my attention?” Director Taemin teased. He put a hand on Yuta’s head and ruffled his hair like a child’s. “Don’t worry. I love 127 and WeishenV equally.”

Yuta shrugged away under the guise of ruffling out his jacket, but the huge spike of discomfort and embarrassment that speared out through Yuta’s empathic channel made more than a few of them snicker.

“ _He didn’t answer though._ ”

Mark’s comment was mostly overshadowed by the members teasing Yuta. Taeyong quickly scolded them about how rude it was to talk telepathically around someone—especially the director—who couldn’t use telepathy. However, Taeyong did notice the director’s deflection of the topic too.

He couldn’t call himself a part of 127 if he wasn’t curious as to what the director talked about with Kun when they had their meetings, but it wasn’t something that he felt like he needed to spy on them to find out. The director was the boss of WeishenV just like he was of 127, so it made sense that Director Taemin would have to meet with Kun as WeishenV’s leader. But why would they meet during a lockdown? And why did Kun look unwell? That had never happened before.

When everyone finally made it up to the 127th floor, the director surprisingly stepped off with them instead of continuing up to his office on the 130th floor. He asked Jaehyun to pull up the video footage that Jungwoo’s AI flagged so he could check with him. Jaehyun, who was used to the 127 members declaring that they’d rather take a flying leap off the observation deck than help with monitor duty, was taken aback at the _director_ of all people not only being willing but requesting to help him.

“Director?”

Taeyong heard Mark’s voice. The fact he was talking to the director caught his curiosity, but also the tempest of emotions that he could feel off the younger was slightly concerning him.

Director Taemin looked over his shoulder where he was leaning over Jaehyun’s chair in front of the monitor wall.

“Why was Kun here?” Mark looked down at his shoes and spoke softly like a child afraid to talk back to his parents.

Taemin’s lips twitched just slightly into a frown as Mark continued.

“He shouldn’t be here. He’s not supposed to…. Kun _can’t_ be here.” Mark brought a hand to the side of his head like something was paining him.

The night shift members had already piled into the crash room, but the day shift members were busily starting their tasks until they all stiffened in unison when they sensed Mark’s distress.

Taeyong stepped out from where he had been casually observing and quickly tried to intervene. Mark who normally kept his empathic channel quiet was projecting confused and distressed emotions like fireworks. 

Johnny sent Taeyong a wide-eyed look, begging him to do something. Taeyong tried to pull Mark away from the director and send him reassurances, anything to keep Mark from unraveling further in front of their boss, but the director stopped him.

“I just remembered that I need Mark to help me with another errand.” Taemin’s expression was back to light and smiley. “I hope you don’t mind if I steal him from you for the day again, Taeyong.”

Taeyong shook his head, but his expression probably looked anything but okay. Mark’s mental state was not getting better no matter what Taeyong tried to do telepathically. The younger was grasping at his head with both hands now and blinking rapidly, sending off disjointed and muddled messages through his mental channels.

Mark was in no state to be doing a personal errand for the director, but Director Taemin gently put an arm around Mark’s shoulders and ushered him toward the elevator. Jaehyun reached out to grasp Taeyong on the shoulder, the physical contact boosting their mental connection purposefully so that Taeyong could feel the exact degree to which Jaehyun was concerned, but Taeyong was helpless to do anything. Taeyong couldn’t say no to their boss.

Since Director Taemin wasn’t enhanced, he had no way to sense the extent that Mark was emotionally distressed, and Taeyong couldn’t tell him that Mark couldn’t handle an assignment now. 127 were supposed to be ready for anything at all times. He worried for Mark’s job if he outed his mental state now. There was nothing he could do.

As he saw the two enter the elevator, Taeyong told himself that maybe getting away from everything for a day was what Mark needed. He’d always been one of the more tightly wound ones. He typically came back from the director’s errands looking a little ragged.

In fact, he often looked a bit like Kun had looked earlier. Something in Taeyong’s chest clinched in that realization.

As the elevator door closed, he couldn’t help but notice Mark’s wide and almost scared eyes. Taeyong shook his head. The kid was a ball of anxiety. There was no reason Taeyong needed to become one too. Just like Kun, Mark would be fine.

He announced to everyone that they needed to get back to work, but it wasn’t for a few more seconds—when Mark was completely out of telepathic range—that the others actually did so.

He walked over to Jaehyun who was looking through the security footage he talked about earlier.

Taeyong grabbed a remote and flicked through the currently streaming live feeds from cameras just outside of the SM building. It didn’t take long to find WeishenV’s leader again. The video showed he was down the street, almost back to WeishenV’s base, which gave Taeyong relief. He tried not to notice the way Kun would stop to lean against the side of a building to catch his breath every block or so.

He set the remote down and leaned heavily against Jaehyun’s desk with both his hands. He breathed out, trying to not project his worry especially now that the others were so worked up too.

Taeyong pushed himself back up and felt his right hand clinch up again. This time it was painful, and he couldn’t hide it from Jaehyun who looked at him with unashamed concern.

“ _Figure out how the director got in this building while it was locked down_ ,” Taeyong ordered quietly. “ _We need to find that security hole_.”

Jaehyun nodded almost imperceptibly, also knowing well the implied command to keep his investigation subtle as it would look very bad if 127 was spying on their own boss.

There was no one in the conference room, so that’s where Taeyong chose to try to fix his hand. This time it was much harder to work it out of its frozen state. And when it did finally unlock, there was a lance of pain that caused him to see stars. He collapsed into one of the chairs around the conference table and just breathed for a second.

“Taeyong,” Jaehyun’s voice buzzed through his Neo Earpiece, “none of the exterior cameras picked up Kun or the director entering the building, and none of the entrance Neo Pads have any logs of the director scanning in to enter. Though I found them on a lobby floor camera coming up from the basement just before we arrived tonight.”

Taeyong paled. That could only mean there was an entrance into the SM building in the basement that he didn’t know about. He knew that for some reason the basement levels were treated almost like an entirely different building. None of the basement systems were wired into the levels above so there was no way for 127 to have access to those entrance and exit logs.

The director didn’t explicitly say Taeyong couldn’t go into the basement. It was just that he never had the clearance, so it was pretty implied. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t try to find a set of doors that led to the basement from outside if he didn’t actually go in, right? Taeyong never felt more like a 127 member than when he found loopholes like this to secretly exploit.

“Johnny.” Taeyong’s Neo Earpiece beeped once to confirm the channel was open. “How fresh is your mental map of the tunnels?”

“What’s going on, boss?” Johnny’s voice lacked the teasing lilt he usually had. Even he knew when it was appropriate to break the tension with a joke and when it was time to get serious.

Taeyong sighed as he flexed his hand again on the conference table. “We’re going to find a missing door.”

* * *

When Taemin and Mark got out of the elevator, the crowd of tourists instinctively backed away from them. Even pathetic, non-enhanced humans had enough instinct to know to get out of Taemin’s way. Why was it that his experiments, the ones who literally carried part of Taemin himself in their blood, seemed determined to ruin all of his carefully crafted plans?

He shoved his security pass at the guard standing in front of the basement elevator. The man looked a little taken aback, but he scanned the card anyway. The elevator arrived with a melodic ring ding dong, and Taemin practically threw Mark in.

The guard made a squeak of protest. “I need to scan his pass too!”

Taemin flared red eyes at the man who immediately dropped the Neo Pad to grab at his head. As the elevator doors closed, Taemin saw blood drip out of the guard’s nose.

Taemin didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy. Those guards were a dime a dozen. Replaceable. Others however….

“Sir, I...I’m not supposed to go to the basement.” Mark started to back into the corner of the lift, his eyes still glazed over as Minho’s memory manipulation continued to fail spectacularly.

“What you’re supposed to do is _behave_ , and behave you will.”

Ignoring the panic attack rising to the surface in the boy behind him, Taemin faced the elevator doors and tapped his foot impatiently. He had been here all weekend with Kun and now this? He was a busy man. He didn’t have time for the cogs in his plan to rust over.

The elevator slowed and displayed “B4” on the screen. Taemin pushed his way through the opening doors and stormed past the guard. If that bot didn’t recognize his face, it belonged in the trash. When the guard bot made a sound of protest, Taemin whirled around to dismantle it then and there. What he hadn’t expected to see was the elevator guard slumped to the ground, sparking and twitching and the guard’s forfeited Neo Cryo Gun in the hands of his newest 127 recruit.

Mark’s arms quivered as he held the gun trained on Taemin’s chest. His fragments of frayed memories made it impossible for him to hold the weapon steady as they tried to fit themselves into a pattern that made sense.

Taemin couldn’t help but smirk at Mark’s wide-eyed expression when he pulled the trigger but the gun locked up, trilling a warning that the gun was now in safety mode.

“I would never let anyone shoot me twice.”

Taemin took a step forward. Mark took a step back. They’d been here before. They both knew how this would end. Even with all his enhanced strength, Mark stood no chance against Taemin. He stared at his director like a deer in headlights as Taemin walked forward until there was about an arm’s length of distance between them.

Taemin didn’t need to waste his power on this. Mark would listen. For the number of times he had begged for mercy before, he was only seconds away from folding again.

“Give me the gun, 02-127.”

Mark’s arm lifted slowly, tentatively bringing the gun towards Taemin’s outstretched hand.

Taemin reached out with his other arm to pat Mark’s head. “Very good. You see, people who listen get to have free will.”

But the second Taemin got close enough, Mark switched gears entirely. He ducked away from Taemin’s hand and rammed the butt of the weapon into the director’s head.

Taemin staggered, stabilizing himself on the wall until he could get his bearings again. In that moment of weakness, Mark managed to get back into the elevator and use the guard’s Neo Pad to close the doors.

The director growled as he lunged for the doors. He managed to wrench open the first set which closed the hallway, but the actual elevator doors themselves were shut tight. He could feel the cold through his fingertips—the familiar, special cold that he had once been able to wield like the others. _The Neo Cryo Gun._ He slammed a fist against the doors but knew he wasn’t getting through. Those doors were frozen solid.

Taemin jammed his finger into his Neo Earpiece. He didn’t have time to click through the channels to find the one used specifically with the basement security drones. Instead, he used his override to connect to all of the basement-level earpieces.

“02-127 has relapsed in the elevator. Bring the elevator up to B2 and use the Neo Pyro Torches to break into it. Take 02-127 alive by any means necessary!”

The robots didn’t relay an affirmative message that they’d heard. They didn’t need to. They were technology that behaved exactly as designed. It was the humans who were the trouble.

Taemin tisked. There were only two ways to get out of the basement. The first was up through the normal entrance, but the elevator was out of commission. Though it was troublesome, Taemin had no choice but to take the second option.

Taemin watched as the elevator was overridden and started to make its ascent up to where the security bots would be waiting for Mark. Now that the shaft was clear in front of him, Taemin grabbed onto one of the cables and slid down until he reached the very bottom of the dark elevator shaft.

He pried open B5’s doors just as he had the fourth floor’s and climbed into the hallway. 

The singular security bot standing guard at his post by the elevator hardly reacted when Taemin walked on to the fifth floor basement. Taemin’s steps echoed as he stomped across the concrete in the wide, gray room.

This floor’s whole purpose was to be just a buffer floor between B6 and the Dream Lab on B4. But it had become a sort of storage area over the past couple years. Huge storage containers were stacked neatly along the walls, but the big boxes of spare parts for the nurse bots and huge trollies of spent saline pouches had been rolled into a corner and even overturned and emptied to make what looked like a fortress of wheeled carts.

As Taemin passed, he could see a flash of white hospital garments from within the fort, and his enhanced hearing heard two voices whispering.

“It’s the director!”

“Does that mean Kun’s here again? I miss him already.”

Taemin clenched his fists. He didn’t have time to reprimand Minho’s brats.

He kept walking until he reached a door on the other side of the room. He scanned his eyes at the sensor and opened the door once it beeped. That’s when a mechanical voice came through his earpiece. Nurse bots didn’t have voices so it must have been one of the security bots. 

“02-127 is not in the elevator.”

“Then find him!” Taemin slammed the door shut behind him.

Once at the bottom of the short, one-floor staircase, he was about to scan again at the dimly lit door when he heard Minho’s voice in his ear piece. 

“We have him. B6.”

Taemin was sure that he caused some damage to the door from opening it so fast once it unlocked, but he could get some maintenance bots to fix it after the elevator. He had other things to worry about. Like how of all the places, Mark somehow found his way to his secret basement floor. The floor that was on none of the building schematics, and was the most highly secured location on all of EXO Planet. His dungeon for the Legends: the Lucky One Lab.

He found Minho hovering over Mark’s unconscious form as nurses moved him to a gurney and hooked him up to sedatives.

“Did he see them?”

“No, sir. We caught him before he could enter the actual lab.”

Taemin had only a second of relief wash over him before he was overwhelmed by rage. He channeled that rage into his fist and punched Minho in the face.

“This is your fault!”

When the doctor turned his head back toward Taemin, he could see his nose was very disfigured. Taemin had no sympathy.

“Why is it that our most important experiments keep having problems!”

“As I informed you before, sir,” Minho began, “our algorithms suggested that 02-127 hadn’t fully developed his powers before you disconnected him. This could be a side-effect—”

“No. There’s nothing wrong with his powers. It’s the fact that he’d only been out of the Dream Lab for a month and his memory has relapsed eight times.That’s nothing to do with the Dream Lab and everything to do with you and your incompetence. And not only that,” Taemin got up in the doctor’s face, “it’s only a matter of time before 1011-V has such a severe power flare that he destroys himself. So tell me, doctor, why are the two most important parts of my plan falling apart?!”

“We try to gather as much data as we can every time, sir, and I think we’re getting a better picture—”

“Forget it!” He then radioed for the maintenance bots to start immediate repairs on the elevator so that they could take Mark up to the Dream Lab to erase his memory again.

Taemin stalked away, passing by the Lucky One’s ten tubes that contained the unconscious forms of the Legends. He didn’t come down to this floor often, so he couldn’t help but look at them as he walked by.

Legends—beings who existed before time itself—didn’t age, but as they floated stagnantly in the blue gel, they looked inexplicably older. Taemin wondered if he looked the same.

The creases on Suho’s forehead were a bit deeper. Xiumin’s meticulously kept hair was longer than he’d ever seen it, tugged gently in the lazy current of the gel.

Boom!

Taemin couldn’t help but jump back at the sudden noise. Chanyeol’s clenched fist had slammed into the glass. 

That’s when the mostly silent lab erupted into a cacophony of alarms. Nurses automatically stopped whatever they were doing and rotated abruptly on their metal joints to rush to the tubes.

Taemin watched as the insulating gel started to boil inside Chanyeol’s tube, and an orange outline appeared on the glass where Chanyeol pressed his hand. The glass warped in front of Taemin’s eyes.

He took a step back and shouted for Minho. “Sedate them! Sedate them all! Now!”

There was a loud hissing sound as the nurses in unison flicked the switches on the bases of the Legends’ tubes. He watched as a blue liquid rushed up the IVs and spilled in to mix with the liquid in the cylindrical containers.

It took only a second, but it seemed much longer. Finally the alarms one by one started to shut down. Chanyeol’s hand dropped back to his side, leaving behind an ominous hand-sized convex flaw in the glass.

Taemin stood there for a moment, as if any movement would wake them again.

“Sir, you should—”

“I know. They don’t like me here.” He turned away from Minho and the nurses and walked just a few steps before he doubled back.

He walked up to Chanyeol’s tube, steadying his hands by curling them into fists. “The next time I come down here will be to throw your precious Kai and Baekhyun into the empty tubes. I hope you all decide to act up again then so that I can fully enjoy your reactions to finally losing your last hope.”

Taemin turned on his heels and marched out of the lab, happier than he would like to admit that there were several feet of steel between himself and the Legends now.

He passed through the preliminary security levels of the floor until he reached a set of doors at the end of a hallway. He didn’t particularly enjoy stalking through the underground tunnels like this, but they were a necessary evil—especially when he had certain important pieces in his game that liked to break often.

He rubbed a hand through his hair as the door opened, only to find himself staring into the wide-eyed face of Johnny.

“Director?”

Taemin blinked, but he still couldn’t wake up from this nightmare. Johnny had never acted out, and here he was—right in front of the entrance to the most secret part of his entire operation. This might as well happen today.

He didn’t particularly care why Johnny was there. It wouldn’t matter so long as Johnny didn’t remember. Minho was already wiping Mark’s memories. What’s one more?

He reached out to grab Johnny’s arm, and with strength he knew Johnny didn’t know he had, he yanked him inside and let the door lock itself behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the SM Building floor schematics for reference. You're welcome.
> 
> SM Building Floors  
> Roof - SM Tower Observation Deck for tourists  
> 130 - the offices of CEO Onew, Director Taemin, and other SM executives  
> 127 - 127’s floor  
> 1 - public lobby; basement elevator access  
> B1 - private hospital  
> B2 - robot repair; building/lab maintenance  
> B3 - secret R&D department  
> B4 - Dream Lab (where the Dreamies are held; where memory wiping is done)  
> B5 - buffer floor (the hideout for Minho’s charges); last basement floor with elevator access  
> B6 - Lucky One Lab (where EXO are held); no elevator access; not on any blueprints; secret tunnel access


	7. Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “What connects NCT is ‘dreams.’ We can always meet in dreams, empathize in our dreams, and become one with music.” — Mark in the “NCTmentary Ep 1 Dream Lab”

_“What you’re supposed to do is_ behave _, and behave you will.”_

All at once a blast of sensory input roused Mark from his mind fog. His lungs burned and his heart pounded and his legs ached as his body continued to carry him forward on the desert path on which he ran. His sudden self-awareness disrupted the rhythm of his feet, and he stumbled forward, skidding through the sand on his hands and knees.

He brushed the sand off his hands and cupped them over his eyes to block the sun. The dunes of the lifeless desert terrain rose up around him, and a gust of wind blew a tunnel of sand between the mounds.

It didn’t take long for Mark to figure out where he was now that his mind was fully adjusted. He was asleep—back in the Dream—the Dreamies’ Dream.

The Neo Culture Technology in the Dream Lab was a powerful thing. Not only could it physically alter the genetics of its subjects in an abnormal way, but it also linked those subjects together, possibly unintentionally. Although Mark couldn’t remember it, the enhancement process had to have been painful. Humans aren’t born with powers because they’re not supposed to have them. Changing a person’s physical make-up couldn’t be an easy thing to do or to experience. To cope with the pain of it, the mind rejects reality and enters an extended dream state—at least, that’s what Doyoung suggested. Most of those who were enhanced came to adopt his running theory rather than think too much about it themselves.

The Dreamies, while in the process of being enhanced, live in this Dream constantly, completely unaware of and resistant to believing in a reality outside of it. Only when disconnected from the Dream Lab can they accept that the life they thought they were living was only an experiment-induced lucid dream.

While the members of 127 and WeishenV can of course have normal dreams, even after disconnecting, it is still possible for them to unintentionally synchronize with the Dreamies’ Dream. Maybe it was some lingering side-effect of having their genetic make-up changed and engineered? On a day when Ten was feeling more cynical than normal, he confided in Mark that maybe it was because the experiment hadn’t actually ended yet.

Mark squinted as sand kicked up into his face. Despite it being a dream, he vividly felt the sand hit like tiny needles against his skin in the hollow desert wind.

Mark knew he must be far away from the Dreamies’ home judging from the terrain. The farther you got away from the Dreamies’ house—the farther you got away from their influence—the more the Dream literally dried up. Like when land is absent of water in the real world, the Dream without the Dreamies’ imagination to give form to it crumbled away into a limitless desert.

Mark squinted his eyes to search for some sort of shade to shelter under until he woke up. He didn’t know how it was decided where in the Dream he would appear. Sometimes he would appear right in the Dreamies’ living room. Other times, he found himself far out in the desert, alone with his thoughts until the Dreamies either found him by chance or he woke up.

The desert sun reflected harsh rays into his eyes as he scanned the horizon, and he really wished he still had his Dreamie powers so he could conjure up some sunglasses at least. When his search turned up nothing but sand and more sand, he sighed and laid back. There was no point in wandering in a place that was literally infinite.

“Mark!”

Mark shot up like he was spring loaded, almost colliding with the boy who was suddenly standing above him. “Chenle! How long have you been standing there?”

Chenle shrugged and weighed the amount of time in his mind. “A while...you just couldn’t see me.” 

Mark was so relieved that a Dreamie found him. He really didn’t want to have to bake under this sun for the entire time he was asleep.

Chenle crouched down next to Mark and started to pack some sand into a ball. “I’ve been working on this for so long. Jisung tried to tell me I couldn’t do it, but he was wrong.”

Mark watched as the sand Chenle was manipulating fused together, forming a small silver machine.

Chenle grinned and tossed the machine in the air. It hovered above his head for a moment before a flash of light burst out the bottom.

Mark stumbled back, shielding his eyes. When he looked up again, Chenle and the machine were gone.

“Chenle!” Mark called, panic shaking his voice. Dreamies weren’t supposed to disappear. They couldn’t wake up. Unless Taemin…. “Chenle!” He dropped to the ground, frantically digging through the sand, but he knew it was no use. If Chenle was awake, he was gone.

Mark sat back in defeat, wondering if Chenle would show up in 127 or in WeishenV in the coming few days, when he heard a distinct dolphin laugh that could only come from one person.

Chenle appeared again out of nowhere, clutching his sides and rolling on the ground, the machine still hanging in the air above him. “Chenle! Chenle!” he mocked. “I was only gone for ten seconds. What’s with the freak out?”

Mark poked Chenle’s arm just to make sure he was real then breathed a sigh of relief. “I was worried, dude.”

“That was beyond worried.” He imitated Mark scrambling around in the sand.

“How did you do that?” Mark changed the subject.

“Well….”

The word was long and drawn out. Mark knew he was in for a story.

“Jisung’s been getting on my nerves.” Chenle crossed his arms in prime pout position. “He thinks he’s so cool because he can move things without touching them.”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Really? How long has he been able to do that?”

Chenle waved it off. “It’s not important. And it's really not that cool. He can only do it with tiny things, and none of it’s useful anyway. Like this morning, he _claimed_ to have knocked over a paper cup on the kitchen table.” Chenle threw his hands down. “The window was open! The wind blew it over!”

Mark nodded, calming his nerves once again. The more the Dreamies’ powers developed in the Dream the closer they were to being disconnected from it. Jisung’s ability didn’t seem too strong yet. He should be safe for now.

“Wow. A paper cup. Amazing.” Chenle sulked. “But for some reason everyone else is so impressed. ‘How do you do it Jisung?’ ‘I want to try too.’ ‘Teach us your ways Jisung,’” he mimicked the others.

“It’s okay if they’re exci—”

“Now all anybody ever does is sit around and stare at things like leaves or candy wrappers or pieces of string hoping that it will twitch just a little so they can get all excited over nothing.”

Mark took a step back, attempting to distance himself from the direct line of fire which was getting louder and louder with every syllable.

“And mine moved!” Chenle screamed. “I saw it move. Jeno saw it move. _I_ did it! But _Jisung_ said it was a joke and that _he_ did it.”

“I’m sure it was—”

“So I told Jisung that I wouldn’t even want to be able to do something as boring as that—cause I don’t—and that I would learn a trick 3,000 times cooler than his.”

Mark resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to get a word out edgewise until Chenle’s story was finished.

“And then Jisung said that he’d like to see me try. So I said he _wouldn’t_ be able to see me because I was going to turn invisible.” He folded his arms triumphantly. “And I did.”

Mark waited a moment to be sure Chenle had said his piece. He half-expected to be cut off again but tried anyway, “So how does it work?”

Chenle grinned, allowing his next explanation to charge. He grabbed his floating contraption, pulled it down to eye level, and pointed to the bulb protruding out the bottom. “This thing…” He started off strong. But after a beat of staring at the machine blankly, he shook his head and offered a pretty generic answer. “Something to do with bending the natural light or whatever.” He waved his hand and the machine turned to sand once again, sprinkling to the ground.

He unclipped a walkie talkie from his belt loop and spoke into it. “Chenle to Jaemin. Chenle to Jaemin. Do you copy?”

The device beeped once before a reply came back. “This is Chief Jaemin speaking. Has your expedition been successful?”

“Quite.” Chenle looked at Mark like he had found gold. “You wouldn’t believe who I found wandering around in the desert.”

Jaemin’s voice jumped an octave. “Wait! Really! Who’s home?”

“Have Renjun fire up the portal, and you’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

In the Dream, the Dreamies could do pretty much anything they put their minds to. If they could think it, they could make it happen. Of course, it took some work and practice to successfully manipulate the Dream as they pleased. That’s why when Renjun’s portal showed up, it showed up about a hundred yards to the left of where Mark and Chenle stood.

Chenle’s walkie talkie beeped again. “Do you see it? He activated it.”

“It’s so far,” Chenle whined.

The walkie talkie squealed, and this time Renjun’s voice, distorted by how close he was holding the device to his mouth, came through. “You were the one complaining about how we sit around and do nothing too much, so I gave you something to do.”

Chenle grumbled but didn’t respond.

The two of them approached the lopsided black film that, in theory, should teleport them to the Dreamies’ home base. Mark hadn’t lost a limb or been accidentally dropped in the middle of the ocean in a freak teleporting accident yet, but as he looked at the wobbly edges of the fading portal, he steeled himself for the worst.

Passing through these portals was always a strange sensation. It felt like he was being sucked through a straw and shot out like a spitball on the other side. Mark flew into the room, catching himself on his hands and knees. He looked down at the rest of his body and was relieved to see all extremities accounted for.

“Mark!” Jaemin’s smile exploded off his face as he pulled Mark to his feet and gave him a big hug. “I’m so glad you’re back. I have something to show you.” He grabbed Mark’s sleeve and tugged him past the impending squabble settling between Chenle and Renjun.

Mark relaxed into the overwhelming sense of home he felt from being in the Dreamies’ house again. The obnoxious bright pink walls and decorative white trim were a comfort, and the windows overlooking the neon dunes of the Dreamscape just felt so familiar as if he hadn’t graduated and moved out a whole month ago.

The Dreamies’ home was more like an ever changing clubhouse. Decorations and even the layout of the rooms changed on the whim of its tennents. Science projects and art supplies and sports equipment lay scattered around like their owners didn’t have a care in the world—and didn’t need one.

“Ta da!” Jaemin held out his hands, presenting some intricate carvings spiraling up the white banister on the staircase. “What do you think? I did a pretty good job, right?”

“Looks nice,” Mark said as he ran his hand along the wood. It had only been a week since he had last been here, but true to Dreamie fashion, nothing stayed the same for long. The huge paint stain on the carpet was new as was the exorbitant collection of sea glass piled in the corner of the room. Mark picked up a foggy blue piece and held it to the light. “What’s all this for?”

“Those are Jeno’s. You’ve _got_ to see his mosaic in the backyard.” Jaemin bounded down the stairs and snagged Mark’s sleeve again, leading him toward the back porch. But at the sound of the front door chimes, he did an about face, dragging Mark in the opposite direction. “That must be him now. He and Jisung went out a while ago but said they wouldn’t be long.”

“Jeno, Jisung,” he sang. “Look who came—Johnny?!” Jaemin released Mark’s sleeve and ran over to greet his next guest.

Johnny looked pale, and he leaned on the doorframe like he was going to be sick.

Jaemin, blinded by his excitement, failed to recognize Johnny’s discomfort. “It’s been forever since you’ve been back. Did you get our coffee?”

Johnny stumbled forward, nearly crushing Jaemin as he fell.

Mark lunged to catch him, just barely saving Jaemin from being flattened. “Over there.” His voice was strained under Johnny’s weight, and he used his head to motion to a couch in the next room. The two of them shuffled Johnny to the couch and flopped him down.

“What’s wrong with him?” Jaemin asked.

Mark snapped his fingers in front of Johnny’s face but got no response. He recognized the glazed over look in his eyes. It would take a few minutes for him to gain full consciousness in the Dream. The only question was, why was Johnny—a member who worked the day shift—asleep in the middle of the day?

“I’ll get him something to drink,” said Jaemin, creating a task to hide his concern.

Mark knew Dream time was weird compared to time in reality, but it couldn’t have possibly been long enough for a full day to have passed and for it to be a reasonable time for Johnny to be asleep. He had a bad feeling about this but tried not to project too much of his negative emotions. He didn’t want his empathic uneasiness to be the first thing Johnny felt when he came to.

Johnny stirred as the bleariness lifted from his eyes enough for him to recognize Mark standing in front of him. He rubbed a hand over his forehead and groaned, _“Not you again.”_

Mark rolled his eyes. _“Yes, yes. You have to see me all day, and now you even see me in your sleep.”_

_“What a nightmare.”_ Johnny pushed himself upright and took in his surroundings. _“Well, at least I’m not one of the poor souls listening to your terrifying sleep talk._ ”

_“Hey. Someday one of my messages is going to rattle somebody’s memory and get through to them.”_

Mark’s sleep talk was not without purpose. He knew exactly what he was doing. Well, at least what he wanted it to be doing.

Each person in 127 and WeishenV seemed to live two lives. The first life was the one in service to SM, their lives defined and memories manipulated by Taemin to make them good, little workers.

The second life was the one they experienced only when back in the Dream. For some reason, their memories were temporarily restored while in Dream, which meant that every time they went back into the Dream, they remembered everything—everything that had happened inside and outside of the Dream. However, the second they woke up and left the Dream, they forgot again, or more accurately, only remembered what Taemin had carefully selected.

Mark, however, talked in his sleep, and he was convinced his little habit could be used to bridge the gap between when they had their memories in the Dream and the outside world where they didn’t know anything. However, it had yielded less than promising results so far.

_“Uh-huh. So far it’s just made everyone observe a fifty-foot buffer radius around your possessed sleeping self. And what message do you plan to terrify us with today? Could it be bits and pieces of the Dreamies’ names which mean absolutely nothing to us out there? Or perhaps the classic, ‘Help me.’”_

_“Ha. Ha. Make fun all you want.”_ Mark grabbed a wooden stool from the other side of the room and sat opposite Johnny. _“And there’s no message today. I’m asleep in the basement again. There’s no one around to hear me.”_

The sickly color returned to Johnny’s face, and he leaned back into the couch.

Just in time, Jaemin returned with what Mark presumed to be water in a white teacup. “This was the only cup I could find,” he said as he handed it to Johnny.

Johnny drained it in one gulp and set the cup back into Jaemin’s hand like it was a saucer. Jaemin immediately ran off to refill it.

Johnny sighed and rubbed the sides of his head. _“I think I’m there too—the basement.”_

“Wait! What?” Mark jumped to his feet. Even he was shocked by how loud his voice came out before he switched back to telepathy. _“How did you end up there?”_

Johnny cringed at Mark’s auditory outburst and motioned for him to sit back down. _“I think I need a minute. It’s still coming back. What happened to you? Same old, same old?”_

Mark’s frequent trips to the basement were no secret among 127 and WeishenV members in the Dream. Although most of them functioned fine for years without ever needing one of Taemin’s tune ups, anyone who had been dragged down there knew it was a traumatic experience to say the least. Most didn’t press for details, doing their best to keep the Dream a safe space, opposite from the nightmare they were living out in the real world. _“Actually...no.”_ Mark paused, finally comprehending the magnitude of the feat he had almost just pulled off. _“I got away from Taemin for a few minutes.”_

Johnny stopped massaging his head and looked up.

_“I somehow overwhelmed the 4th basement elevator guard. It was weird. I could have sworn he wanted me to escape. He practically handed me his gun and Neo Pad.”_

_“Aren’t all the basement guards robots? What a lucky malfunction. If only they could do that more often.”_

_“I know, right? I was able to use his Neo Cryo Gun to freeze myself in the elevator.”_

_“Smart.”_ Johnny nodded, impressed. " _Too bad you were a sitting duck in there though.”_

Mark didn’t mean to ramble, but the truth was he was still processing the event himself so his words came out sloppy and disorganized. _“Actually, there was a ventilation panel at the top, and I crawled out into the elevator shaft. But then the elevator started moving, and I panicked and jumped into the first air duct that I saw, which in hindsight, probably wasn’t the best idea. It was practically a vertical drop. The next thing I knew, I was falling through a ceiling right at the feet of that Dr. Minho guy. I think he panicked too because he’s not usually violent, but the last thing I remember was him hitting me on the head.”_

Johnny smiled, apparently enjoying the image of Mark getting knocked on the head. _“Oh so that’s how they do it...inducing amnesia. Now all those brain cells you’re missing makes a whole lot of sense.”_

_“Hey, I wouldn’t joke about brain cells if I were you. It seems like some of yours are in jeopardy right now too.”_

_“At least I won’t lose as many as you,”_ Johnny joked. His jesting tone was one Mark knew well, but the smile masking obvious pain didn’t normally come in tandem.

Mark shifted uncomfortably in his seat. _“Is this your first time...getting post-Dream Lab…”_ He tried to think of a gentler way to put it. _“maintenance?”_

_“I think so.”_ Just for a second Johnny allowed his expression to match the pain he was in. _“Does it always hurt this much?”_

Mark wished he had a better answer. _“I gotta be honest, the first time sucks. But the next time isn't as bad. You kind of get used to it, not that it’s something you’d want to get used to.”_

_“I don’t even know what I did wrong. Taemin just showed up out of nowhere and practically threw me at Dr. Minho.”_

_“Had some of your memories come back? He can always kind of tell.”_

Johnny shook his head. _“I didn’t remember anything. I had no idea where I was or what was going on.”_

Mark leaned his elbows on his knees and scrunched up his face in thought. _“Why would Taemin go all the way back up to the 127th floor to get you if your memory hadn’t relapsed?”_

_“Actually, he found me in the tunnels.”_

Mark looked at Johnny, completely lost.

_“Taeyong was_ freaking out _about how the director and Kun got into the building while it was on lockdown. You know how he is.”_

Mark nodded. Taeyong sometimes took his job _too_ seriously.

_“He was determined to find that other entrance before the day was done just so he ‘knew where it was’ and so he could ‘confirm it was up to security standards.’ We figured it was in the tunnels somewhere since the director brought Kun up from the basement which could only be accessed underground.”_

_“Did you find it? The entrance?”_

_“Yeah. But I never would have noticed it if Taemin wouldn’t have been using it right when I walked past.”_ Johnny chuckled, realizing the almost comical timing. _“I guess he really doesn’t want us to know about that entrance because that’s the only reason I can think of for me suffering this monster of a headache right now.”_

Mark pressed his fingers to his chin as he thought. What could be so secret about that entrance that Taemin would alter Johnny’s memory over it? It wasn’t like 127 didn’t know the basement existed. And the entrance through elevator access was common knowledge among the security team. What difference does a second entrance make? Apparently a big one. _“Well, we know about it now.”_

_“Yeah, but we only remember in the Dream.”_

_“That’s better than not at all.”_ Mark looked out the window behind Johnny and searched the Dreamies’ front yard for any signs of life. _“I suppose Taeyong will be coming through any second now. Hopefully he shows up somewhere close to here so we can talk to him before we wake up.”_

Johnny winced at another pain and tried to shield his eyes from the light in the room. _“The boss_ does _usually have a pretty good analysis on these kinds of things. But Taeyong…”_ He froze mid sentence then slowly lowered his hands from his head. _“Taeyong….”_

Mark wondered if he had been this scatterbrained himself the first time his memory was erased. It made sense though. It was probably a good thing Johnny’s mind was resisting being scrambled. And it was definitely a bad thing that Mark’s mind didn’t anymore.

Johnny stared at the floor in a trance.

_“EXO Planet to Johnny. Hello?”_

“Taeyong is still in the tunnels,” Johnny mumbled just barely loud enough for Mark to hear.

Mark leaned closer to listen. Maybe the telepathy was hurting his head. As to not aggravate the headache more, he whispered as softly as he could, “Oh. My bad. I thought you two were together. At least he won’t have to have his memory worked on again.”

Johnny shook his head. “We _were_ together. But Taeyong had just turned the corner up ahead when….” Johnny shifted his wide-eyed stare from the floor to Mark and breathed, “Taeyong knows.”

Mark wasn’t quite following but found it understandable that Johnny wasn’t really making sense right now.

“Awake-Taeyong knows,” Johnny continued, picking up speed. “ _Reality_ -Taeyong knows about the entrance. What could be so significant about that secret entrance, I’ve got no clue. But Taemin clearly doesn’t want us to know about it.” He motioned his hands at himself like he was presenting Exhibit A. “But Taeyong knows.”

“And Taemin doesn’t know that he knows,” Mark added, now understanding where Johnny was going with this.

Johnny was about to respond when a commotion erupted in the front yard and the door burst open. Breathing heavily and covered in dust, Jeno, Jisung, and Ten slammed the door shut and collapsed in a heap on the floor

Mark felt a tickle of fear breeze through his empathic bond and glanced at Johnny questioningly.

Ten looked up from the floor and noticed the 127 members in the living room. He nodded a silent hello, still too out of breath to speak, then nudged Jeno and Jisung and signaled that they had visitors.

Jaemin poked his head out from the kitchen. “Guys! You’re back!” He seemed completely unaffected by the state of the three and presented his tiny teacup forward to whoever would take it.

“Well, well, well. Look who it is.” Chenle’s voice slithered in from where he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed in the corner of the room. “Go ahead and tell him, Mark. Tell him what you saw me do.”

Mark didn’t mean to ignore Chenle, which surely made his frustrations worse, but something else was taking up the forefront of his mind. The tiny ripple of fear floating around in the empathic bond was so faint he could barely recognize its existence, yet it was impossible to ignore.

Mark was used to feeling multiple emotions radiating off of his fellow 127 members. No one ever felt only one emotion at a time, and they often didn’t feel the same way for long. Their feelings didn’t always make sense and sometimes didn’t match the way they were expressing themselves on the outside. But one thing that was consistent was that each person had some sort of empathic signature tied to everything they felt, making it easy to determine who the emotions were coming from.

The emotions Mark sensed from Johnny’s empathic signature were bold and clear. And although overshadowed by his currently strong confusion and anger, fear was also something Johnny presently felt. What didn’t make sense though was that if Mark sensed a fear that was clearly labeled “Johnny” and Ten didn’t have empathy powers, then what was this other fear vibrating in the back of his mind with an empathic signature that he didn’t recognize?

“Don’t be shy.” Chenle prodded Mark to speak again. “Tell him that my powers are just as strong as his. Probably stronger.”

Jisung seemed to care less about Chenle’s jabs at him and was still catching his breath from whatever escapade he, Ten, and Jeno had just been through. He was anything but relaxed. The tension in his body was apparent, and he gripped Jeno’s wrist tight enough to cut off circulation.

The other fear persisted in Mark’s mind as he put two and two together. That fear had to be coming from somewhere, and the most scared-looking person in the room also had powers developing rapidly enough that Chenle complained about it with almost every sentence.

Mark’s brain didn’t fully catch up to the reality of it until after the words were already out of his mouth. “What are you so afraid of Jisung?”

The boy jumped at the sound of his name then said in between breaths. “The cave...those guys….”

“Wait, you guys went into the cave? Kun _just_ told us not to go in there,” Jaemin said.

“ _I_ didn’t go in,” Jeno defended as he attempted to twist his wrist from Jisung’s grasp.

Jisung threw his arm back at him. “Yeah, because you were too chicken to come in with us.”

“Ten!” Mark frowned. “I thought we all agreed that we weren’t going back into the cave.”

“Well, you’ll be grateful I did. Remember those ten guys who were sleeping? For a second, they were _awake_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On a scale of "Mmmh" to "Woop woop woop woop FIRETRUCK," how excited are you for NCT 2020 and/or D.O and Xiumin getting back from the military? Personally, we're a "Shawty I'mma party to the sundown"....


	8. Synchronization of Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Now we will enter NCT’s dream using our visualizing apparatus. We are inside Ten’s dream. While dreaming, chain reactions of memories are happening in our brain. Dreams are affected by expressions of unconsciousness, past experiences, and daily experiences. And we enter deeper into the dream.” — Narrator in “NCTmentary Ep 1 Dream Lab”

**Previously**

“Ten!” Mark frowned. “I thought we all agreed that we weren’t going into the cave.”

“Well, you’ll be grateful I did. Remember those ten guys who were sleeping? For a second, they were _awake._ ”

* * *

**1 Year Earlier**

_“We were hoping you’d show up! We just found this cave!”_

_Ten found himself being tugged along by Chenle. He heard someone familiar squawk behind him. He turned to see Taeyong in a similar position. With Yangyang being the most recent to graduate from the Dream Lab, Ten and Taeyong ended up being shoved into the cave by the combined efforts of the eight remaining Dreamies._

_“Are you sure you don’t want to wait a little bit? What if more of us show up?”_

_Ever since becoming ex-Dreamies, Ten and Taeyong were understandably hesitant about joining the kids’ ‘fun adventures.' Not that they thought the Dreamies incompetent or unwilling to protect them, it was just risky. They’d seen for themselves that some of the things that happened in the Dream could affect the real world. They didn’t want to find out what would happen to their real bodies if they got injured or worse while roped into one of the kids’ fun outings._

_At least Ten wasn’t a wuss about it though._

_“We waited long enough!” Jaemin announced._

_The cave the kids were so excited about was oppressively dark inside even with the floating flashlight bots that Haechan caused to hover around them. Usually things in the Dream weren’t this ominous, but he chalked it up to being just another thing that was unnatural about the Dream. Now he knew why the Dreamies wouldn’t go in on their own._

_It made Ten laugh a little inside to think that even after being out of the Dream for so long, the Dreamies still sought out the ex-members for comfort. The reality was that Ten and Taeyong would more likely be hindrances than help now that they didn’t have Dreamie powers anymore. They couldn’t offer anything but morale support._

_The darkness and unknown of the cave made the Dreamies giggly as they ran through the damp passageways with youth and adrenaline. Ten and Taeyong meanwhile lagged behind to take careful, deliberate steps into the uncertain terrain._

_They finally caught up to the Dreamies when the group was forced to pause at a huge chasm. It was too wide to jump over and there were no side passages to detour into._

_In the real world, this sort of thing would be completely impassable. But with how the Dreamies could bend the dream to their wills, there was literally nothing that could stop them from doing something they wanted. It was their domain._

_Ten tried to think of what he would have done if he was still a Dreamie. He and Taeyong both were the unparalleled best at vehicle summons back when they were still able to manipulate the Dream. All he would have had to have done was picture some sick rocket-skateboard and a ramp, and with a snap of his fingers, they would have materialized and everyone could have sailed over the gorge easily. But now Ten prayed that the current Dreamies had something more tame in mind—now that the Dream wasn’t on Ten and Taeyong’s side anymore._

_Lucas stretched his long arms out and popped his knuckles as he got ready to summon something, but Renjun quickly interjected._

_“Wait! I’ve been working on my teleporter, and I really think I’ve got it this time!”_

_Lucas blinked and put his hands in his pockets as he stepped back, allowing Renjun to step close to the edge. In the real world, Ten would have yanked Renjun back by his shirt for standing so close to a bottomless cliff, but this was the Dreamies’ world. Renjun would be okay._

_The group let him try, his hands shaking as he turned his wrist in circles in front of him. Dust off the cave floor swirled into a dense cloud. A knee-high contraption appeared out of the dust, and it started whirling like an evil washing machine when Renjun flicked a switch on its side. However, after a minute or two of letting the machine run, the best it seemed the machine could do was produce a very dubious looking set of blobs on the ground on both sides of the cliff. Needless to say, they all took one look at them and opted to let Lucas handle it._

_Mark patted Renjun on the back, saying that he’d get the hang of it soon._

_Lucas stepped back up to the front and reached out with his arms, waving them up in a dramatic swoop. When he clenched his hands into fists, a large machine that looked more like a metal canon appeared at his side. He smacked a button and the machine started firing out snow hunks in rapid succession. Quickly, ice crystalized in between the two sides of the chasm enough to make a bridge. Lucas looked awfully proud of himself as he snapped his fingers, and his ice machine was banished back into dust._

_The Dreamies didn’t hesitate, didn’t think to check if the ice bridge was thick enough to hold their weight as they skipped across completely unconcerned. After all of the kids seemed to get across fine, Ten and Taeyong stepped on carefully. One look over the edge made Ten’s stomach turn as he slowly scooted his way across._

_Taeyong misstepped and started to slide over the edge into the dark. Ten on reflex caught his arm, but with nothing but slippery ice to grab on to, he too started to get pulled over._

_Ten couldn’t even scream as panic stole all the air in his lungs—both of them tumbled over into the abyss. He squinted his eyes shut, wondering which of the many theories would be proven right. Would they simply wake up in the real world? Or would they die?_

_Suddenly, Ten felt himself be yanked backwards. His eyes flew open as his descent was stopped abruptly._

_Craning his head, Ten saw a drone with a large claw thing that gripped the back of his jacket. Taeyong was in a similar position, but a drone had him by his ankle, letting him dangle headfirst into the darkness._

_“Come on, guys! Quit messing around,” Haechan teased._

_Jaemin and Jeno were the ones controlling the Dream drones. They rotated the joysticks on their respective consoles and the drones responded, bringing Ten and Taeyong up and back over solid ground._

_Once the drones released them, they disappeared in a puff of dust as did everything the Dreamies made when they were done playing with them. Taeyong flopped on the ground, rubbing a hand over his face as he tried to get his breathing back under control. Ten was on his hands and knees in a similar situation._

_Ten saw Mark stretch a hand out to Taeyong. “You alright?”_

_Taeyong nodded, and Mark helped pull him to his feet._

_“Hurry up then, you guys. I don’t think they’ll wait for you.”_

_Ten gave a thumbs up but felt like he’d just aged a decade. However, it was safer to stay with the Dreamies, so he and Taeyong quickly followed Mark toward where the others’ lights bounced along even further back in the cave._

_“Woah! You guys gotta see this!”_

_When Ten and Taeyong finally made it to where the Dreamies were, they found themselves stepping into what looked like a tiny alcove in the cave rock. Even Ten had to duck down to enter it, but once on the other side, they were more than a little shocked._

_Ten and Taeyong knew that the only ones who had the ability to share the Dream with the Dreamies were people who were once Dreamies themselves. Though Ten and Taeyong had long since been taken out of the lab, every once in a while when they slept they could sync back up with the Dreamies like before—like they were right now. However, these were ten people that they had never seen before._

_They were all men. They all looked a bit older than them too, most of them probably having a good ten years or so on most of the Dreamies. They were laying down side-by-side on their backs with their eyes closed. Their chests rising and falling slowly were the only things indicating that they were indeed alive._

_Renjun reached up and took one of Haechan’s floating lights in his hand to shine it closer on the strangers. “What are they doing?”_

_“They’re...sleeping.” Ten felt a little foolish as he looked to Taeyong for confirmation._

_“‘Sleeping’? Isn’t that what you keep saying we’re doing in your world?” Jeno asked as the Dreamies wandered around the strange group, getting a good look at their faces._

_Haechan scoffed. “No. They say we’re ‘dreaming’ or something.”_

_“It’s both. This is exactly what you—what we all do—when we sleep.” Taeyong gestured to the guys on the ground. “You lay down with your eyes closed for hours. And while you sleep, you can dream. It’s what Ten and I are doing in the real world whenever we see you.”_

_“If that’s true, doesn’t that mean they’re already sleeping in the ‘real’ world? Why would they need to sleep here—in a ‘dream’—then?” Mark’s voice had an exasperated edge like he knew this was going to spiral into another unwinnable debate about which world was real._

_“That’s an excellent question.” As Ten regarded the group of them laying there in the dim light, a lurking sense of wrongness crept up his spine._

_“You say they’ll stay like this for hours? Is there a way to make them stop?” Chenle was poking one on the cheek._

_“Yeah! Sleeping is the most boring thing I’ve ever seen.”_

_Ten gently prodded one in the side with his foot, but like a corpse the body just shifted a little, his soft breathing didn’t even change. He got down and shook their shoulders._

_“Hey. Wake up!”_

_The Dreamies followed suit, though their eagerness to have new friends to play with made their actions a little less gentle. Jaemin was prying one’s eyes open, and Lucas had practically picked one up._

_The ten strangers stayed as still as before._

_“Are we doing something wrong?” Mark asked._

_Taeyong shook his head. “It shouldn’t be this hard to wake them. Maybe they’re in...comas or something?” The last part was said softly to Ten._

_Ten nodded as he observed with a growing sense of foreboding building in his mind._

_That’s when they heard soft moaning. The one Jisung was hovering over started to stir._

_The rest of the Dreamies stopped harassing whichever person they were attempting to wake and rushed over to Jisung._

_The one waking’s eyes fluttered open. His eyebrows furrowed upon seeing eight faces staring down at him. On what seemed like instinct, he thrust his hand toward the Dreamies and a huge gust of wind blew them all back into a pile._

_Taeyong ran to intervene, putting himself between the Dreamies and the newly awakened stranger. However, as Taeyong tried to talk and calm him down, he stopped mid sentence and grasped his head in pain._

_Ten sensed it too. It was just like when he sensed 127’s telepathy only much, much stronger. Though he wasn’t nearly as affected by it as Taeyong._

_127’s leader gasped for breath as he dug his fingers into his hair. Ten could sense some weak telepathic activity come from Taeyong underneath the overwhelming mental power of this stranger. Maybe Taeyong was trying to talk with him?_

_All at once, the stranger’s expression seemed to relax somewhat, and Taeyong let out a huge breath of relief when the telepathic pressure eased._

_The stranger blinked and then pinched his own left arm before shrugging. “Sure feels like I’m awake,” he mumbled aloud under his breath._

_There was a charged moment where the stranger simply looked them over with an intense gaze. He then noticed the bodies sleeping around him, and his interest in Ten, Taeyong, and the Dreamies dissipated. He started pointing to each of the bodies and counting softly to himself._

_Ten scooted over to Taeyong. “What did you tell him?”_

_“I told him that this was all a dream, and that we weren’t going to hurt him and asked that he please not hurt us.” Taeyong shrugged under the weight of Ten’s frown. “What else was I supposed to say?”_

_When the stranger counted 9 people littering the cave floor, he raked a hand through his hair. “Two of us are still out there. That’s good odds.” Then he turned to the side and tried to wake the one next to him by kicking him._

_Ten sensed the spike in telepathic pressure though this time it fortunately wasn’t aimed at himself or Taeyong. He must have been trying to wake the other telepathically. Maybe that would work?_

_“So what’s your name?” Jeno asked, courage coming back after the initial rough first impression._

_“Sehun.” He didn’t spare the Dreamie a glance when he answered and instead kept his focus on whacking the one next to him with greater and greater severity when he showed no sign of waking._

_“How did you do that thing with the wind?”_

_“Yeah! It was awesome! Do it again!” Lucas exclaimed._

_Sehun ignored them. He shook the one he was attempting to wake even more roughly, the sleeper’s head lolling loosely on his neck from the thrashing._

_“Tao!” Sehun screamed audibly and made many of them jump._

_They watched as Sehun sank down on his heels, a distinct worry tinging his generally passive face._

_“Why isn’t he waking up?” Sehun’s voice was part threat, part plea as he looked up at Ten and Taeyong and the Dreamies._

_“Because time control is too powerful an ability to let him off sedatives often.”_

_All of them turned to the person who appeared in the cavern entrance._

_“Dreaming at the beck and call of the Dreamies is only a luxury for those who aren’t threats like those in 127 and WeishenV and weaker Legends like you, Sehunie.”_

_“Director?” Taeyong asked, his eyes wide and terrified._

_He couldn’t be here. Not here. It felt like something sacred was being desecrated. Taemin this close to the Dreamies set Ten’s nerves on edge._

_Taemin however didn’t even look at them. Nor did he look at Ten or Taeyong. His eyes were completely on Sehun._

_The ground positively rumbled with telepathic energy. Even the Dreamies seemed to sense something was wrong and started to bunch up behind Mark and shuffle back toward the rear of the alcove._

_Taeyong dropped to his knees, writhing in agony, but Ten didn’t need to be able to hear telepathy to know that Sehun was screaming._

_Sehun’s eyes glowed a fierce, unnatural red before he launched himself at Taemin, a gust of wind throwing him forward at inhuman speeds. He grabbed Taemin by his collar and pinned him against the wall with a loud crack, the impact shattering part of the wall where Taemin hit and sending shards of rock flying._

_“Now, now,_ _Sehůn_ _,” Taemin said sweetly. “You’re always so angry when you get woken up from your naps.”_

_Sehun—or was it Sehůn?—withdrew his grip on Taemin, hand shaking like the action pained him._

_When released, Taemin dropped to the ground and brushed himself off. Then he put a hand on the side of Sehun’s head._

_“It’s time to go back to sleep, Sehůn.”_

_Sehůn grunted, his hands twitching at his sides like he wanted to use them. However, his knees started to shake until they gave out, letting him collapse to the floor._

_He turned around and started to crawl his way toward the other sleepers. Sehůn stretched out his arm and almost managed to reach someone. “Suho…. Help.”_

_“Really? You think your leader who couldn’t keep you all from being captured twice will save you? Stupid kid.”_

_Taemin knelt down and put his hand back on Sehůn’s head. “Sleep.”_

_Sehůn’s arm dropped as all his strength faded, just a fingertip’s length away from his apparent leader’s hand. Ten watched, and as his eyes closed, the red faded._

_Sehun was asleep again._

_Then Taemin rose to his feet and finally, horrifically turned his attention toward Ten and Taeyong._

_Ten took a step closer to Taeyong, adding to the barrier he was making between the director and the Dreamies, but that didn’t deter Taemin in the slightest._

_“What are you two doing here?” Taemin’s voice was low._

_“N-nothing, sir,” Taeyong stammered._

_Anger swelled up in Ten’s stomach at the other’s cowardice, watching as he meekly bowed his head like he was nothing more than the obedient lapdog he was to Taemin in the real world._

_“I wouldn’t consider either of you to be among the smartest experiments I’ve produced, but you’re not stupid. You found this place. You must have a plan.”_

_Taeyong took a step back, his big eyes even wider as Taemin got closer._

_“Who are they, by the way? Those ten guys. More experiments of yours, I take it?” Ten spoke up, redirecting Taemin’s gaze._

_The director frowned. “None of your concern.”_

_Ten took the full force of Taemin’s glare and matched it with his own. “They’re different than us though. You mentioned that they were more powerful. You’re scared of them, aren’t you? That’s why you’re hiding them in this cave away from the rest of us. Made some experiments too powerful to control, did we, Director?”_

_Taemin grabbed Ten and slammed him into the ground._

_The Dreamies flinched, practically falling over each other as they jumped. Taeyong finally leapt into action, trying desperately to free Ten’s neck from Taemin’s grip, but it was short-lived._

_Taemin’s eyes flashed red, and Taeyong tried to raise his hands to cover his eyes, but it was too late. Just the split second of eye contact was all Taemin needed._

_Taeyong’s hands lowered slowly and all the fight drained from his body like a popped water balloon. The concern that had tensed his entire face since the second he showed up in the Dream disappeared until the only thing left was his vacant expression and bright red eyes._

_Ten already knew they were powerless in the Dream, even more so against Taemin, but having Taeyong not only out of commission but under Taemin’s mind control was a whole new level of not good._

_“You can’t hurt us in here.” Ten mostly said it to reassure himself, but he felt nausea creep up as Taemin laughed._

_“You’re right. I’m not a ‘Dreamie’ as you so cutely call them. I can’t affect reality from inside the Dream, but I can do more than hurt you when you wake up.”_

_Ten watched in horror as Taeyong slowly, as if on marionette strings, raised his limp hand toward Taemin._

_“If you ever fall out of line again….” The director took one hand off of Ten’s throat and used it to crush Taeyong’s outstretched hand._

_Taeyong gasped in pain, but he didn’t—couldn’t—tug his arm back. Ten thought he saw a flash of brown return to Taeyong’s eyes as the agony seemed to temporarily overwhelm the mind control. But then Taeyong disappeared._

_Ten was partially relieved, partially terrified that Taeyong woke up. His hand wouldn’t be damaged in real life since even Taemin himself admitted he couldn’t affect reality from within the Dream world. At least Taeyong didn’t have to be here and in pain anymore, but that left Ten alone._

_It may have been Ten’s blurry vision, lightheaded from Taemin restricting his oxygen flow, but he thought he saw something ripple in the ceiling of the cave. It was like a glitch. Then the ground started to shake._

_Taemin glared up at the ceiling as if the bits of stalactite that pebbled down on him was a personal offense._

The Dreamies, _Ten thought. The Dreamies control the Dream. They were probably terrified. It was unclear just how much of the Dream they had the ability to manipulate, but maybe, Ten thought, they had grossly underestimated their influence._

_Taemin suddenly flew back on a huge gust of wind. It wasn’t the same caliber as Sehun’s, but it was powerful enough to knock Taemin over._

_They all looked back at Lucas whose arm was still extended in a punch just as Sehun did to them earlier. He looked surprised at himself, but there was a curl of a smile on his lips._

_“Impressive, Lucas. I think you might be ready to join WeishenV finally.” Taemin picked himself up apparently unharmed. “Don’t you agree, Ten?”_

_Ten wheezed as he stood himself in front of Lucas, prepared to give his all to defend him and the rest of the Dreamies though he knew without a doubt that the younger would be showing up at their dorm soon, not knowing that defending Ten was what got him severed from his peaceful life of ignorance with the Dreamies in order to serve the man who was torturing them._

_He had to get Taemin out of the Dream, and as far as Ten knew, there was only one way to force someone out._

_He took a leap at Taemin. The director was caught off guard at Ten going on the offensive, especially after being strangled. But his healing abilities that Taemin apparently gave him caused him to recover quickly. If Ten could just get a good punch in, he could cause Taemin enough pain and force him to wake up._

_Taemin was fast, dodging Ten’s blows with frustrating ease. And before Ten could blink, Taemin had used Ten’s strength against him to knock his feet out from under him and cause Ten to slam into the ground._

_Ten made a pathetic, pained sound as the air was knocked from his lungs when Taemin pinned a heavy boot to the WeishenV member’s chest._

_“Time to wake up, Ten.”_

_Ten’s eyes bulged as Taemin slowly leaned more and more pressure on his chest despite his struggle. He was seeing stars and praying he would just wake up when suddenly there was a high-pitched bang and Taemin’s foot was gone._

_Ten gasped for air, wincing as his healing rushed to repair his insides. He looked up at Taemin who had been knocked back. He was grasping at his shoulder where there was a huge gash. He took a breath and glared behind Ten with flaming red eyes when he disappeared._

_A collective sigh of relief flooded the cave. Ten turned around behind him to see Mark still holding a silver gun with both hands, a horrified expression on his face as he’d still not unfrozen from the position._

_Ten tried to say something, but he could feel the Dream fading. Apparently he was in too much pain to stay in the Dream after all. At least the Dreamies were safe for now._

* * *

“Awake?” Mark’s voice jolted Ten back to the present. “You mean all of them?”

The Dreamies’ home was of stark contrast to the cave. It was vibrant and alive versus the cave which was stale and empty...almost empty.

Ten nodded. “Talk about creepy. There we were just minding our own business when…”

“I didn’t want to go in,” Jisung interrupted, knowing he was about to be in trouble. “I was dared...and offered eternal gratitude, which somehow sounded pretty nice at the time. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I would like to re-point out that I _didn’t_ go in,” Jeno said, looking pretty proud of himself.

Mark ignored the two and kept his attention trained on Ten. “But what happened?”

Ten pushed himself up off of the floor and tried to calm his breathing. He needed to be cool and collected when he presented this information if he wanted the news to be taken positively.

Mark had been sensitive about anything cave-related ever since their first spelunking experience in the Dream last year. This complete aversion to the cave was a huge blindspot for him and for anyone else he convinced that the cave was something to be feared. Ten knew that fear was purposefully planted by Taemin and refused to let it take root in himself. That cave, as ominous as it was, held something they desperately needed: Taemin’s secrets. If Mark didn’t want to go in, no one was going to force him, but nothing was going to stop Ten from finding answers.

“They were just sleeping like normal,” Ten said casually. “Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, but I guess something was different because they all just kind of woke up.”

“‘Just kind of woke up!?’” Jisung shrieked. He motioned rapidly while he tried to find his words. “They sat straight up out of nowhere like they were shot out of a catapult and glared at us!”

Ten shrugged under Mark’s look of judgment. “They weren’t _that_ fast.”

“And it was simultaneous!” Jisung continued. “They couldn’t have planned it if they tried.”

Jeno smirked. “I heard Jisung’s scream all the way from the outside.”

Jisung rounded on him. “See how you feel next time you’re in a creepy cave witnessing the zombie apocalypse.”

Chenle, who had been angrily engraving lines on the side of a bookshelf for the duration of the conversation, decided to chime in without looking up from his work. “Why didn’t you just knock them back down with your _special powers_?” He waved his hands in the air, adding more fake believability to his false positive tone.

Ten took control of the story back from Jisung before he did too much damage. “He didn’t need to. They weren’t threatening at all, and they were only up for five seconds before they fell back over again, asleep.”

“Did they do anything? Say anything?” Mark asked Jisung, fishing for a response he wanted to hear.

Ten stepped into Mark’s view of Jisung, blocking him from evoking more fear. “No, they didn’t. I tried to wake a few of them again after but had no luck. Granted, I didn’t have much time because my Dreamie tour guide took off running.”

Mark took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair. “Ten. Don’t do that. Please.”

This was too important for Ten to back down. “We need information from them. They might know how to get out.”

“If they knew that, they wouldn’t still be in the Dream. We don’t know anything about them....”

“Exactly. We know everything about this dream except for them. They could be the ticket to our freedom.”

“Or they could be dangerous and really, really hurt someone.”

“Taemin’s afraid of them!”

“Maybe we should be too!”

“I!” Jaemin shouted a little louder than he expected. He shriveled under everyone’s glance but continued speaking. “...made strawberry cake...if anybody wants some…”

Mark breathed heavily and glanced down at Jisung and Jeno who were still on the floor, taking deep interest in the carpet. Then he turned back to Ten and muttered, “If one of them wakes up because of this, it’s on you.” He pushed past into the kitchen, Jaemin following close behind.

The rest of the Dreamies trickled out slowly, leaving only Ten and Johnny in the room. Ten sighed and dropped down on the couch next to Johnny. He didn’t get what was so horrible to Mark about the Dreamies waking up. Wasn’t that their ultimate goal anyway? To get them out?

Ten was grateful it was Johnny who was left. He wouldn’t try to convince Ten that he was wrong or draw the situation out any further than it needed to be. It was likely he would let Ten change the subject, which at this point, was welcome.

“You sleeping in today or what?” Ten asked.

“Memory wipe,” was his brief yet somehow descriptive answer.

Johnny’s hunched over posture and uncharacteristic silence suddenly made sense. Ten nodded his head in understanding. “Lucky.”

Johnny chuckled. “Right.”

“I mean, if you’re lucky enough to get your memory erased, then you must have been lucky enough to have some of your memories return. I’ve never been so fortunate.”

“That’s not exactly how it…” Johnny sighed, resuming his pained expression. “It’s complicated.”

“Shocking.”

Even through all of the physical effects of memory manipulation, Johnny found it in himself to smile. He never failed to get Ten’s sarcasm, and it was much appreciated.

Without warning or asking his permission, the Dream turned out like a light, and Ten was left standing alone in a black abyss. This split second of awareness between sleep and wake Ten believed to be critical. It _had_ to be. He always spent this last moment the same way, hoping that somehow his dreaming brain and his awake brain would overlap just enough and his subconscious would latch onto something.

Although it had yielded no results thus far, Ten tried again, sending himself the same message he told himself every time he could.

_Ten, remember._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think of the Dream? Is there something that's confusing and/or something that you want more explanation about? We're really excited about how this story's going, and we're wanting to check in with our readers to make sure that it's coming across the way we're intending it. ^^
> 
> End of chapter pondering: Lucas in NCT Dream. Discuss.


	9. Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The universe has transformed. Distorted space has been reassembled. Warped time has been reset. And the unpurified Red Force imbrues two suns with darkness. Oh wait. This isn’t the right place for today, is it?” -Narrator in “Power” music video by EXO

The sun had only been up for an hour, but the cup of coffee in Baekhyun’s hand was his third that morning. He and Kai had been sleeping in shifts for months, on Earth watching for the eclipse and now on EXO Planet being cautious of Taemin. He knew Kai was going to be upset with him when he woke up and realized Baekhyun hadn’t woken him for his shift, but he didn’t regret it. The stress of everything had been eating Kai. He needed those few hours of extra sleep more than Baekhyun did.

It was nice being the only one awake. There was this sense of peace he could only reach when he was alone—or with Lay.

While Kai talked about Luhan almost nonstop, Baekhyun never brought up his own complement. He tried not to think about him too much. It always seemed to bring more hurt than healing which just didn’t feel right.

He figured he would enjoy his peace while it lasted. He had a feeling that once the others started waking up, it was going to be chaos in this house again just like it was the night before. Somehow, it didn’t surprise him that these WeishenV guys were more of night owls than early birds. But it _did_ surprise him that the first of them to walk into the kitchen and pour himself a bowl of cereal was the one who maybe needed to sleep the most.

Baekhyun guessed that last night wasn’t the best get-to-know-eachother time for Lucas. So many names and questions had been tossed around the room yesterday, and the remnants of Lucas’s strangled voice had grown thinner and thinner as the night wore on. Baekhyun managed to get the gist of the situation and counted himself lucky for stumbling on these strangers. Their friend with the glowing red eyes who was acting strange had Taemin written all over it.

Lucas nodded a hello in Baekhyun’s direction and went about silently eating his breakfast.

Baekhyun didn’t want to pummel him for more information, but he just needed to know one thing. He considered his words, figuring out the most discreet way to ask him about Taemin, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he was abruptly cut off by a door slamming open against a wall.

Both he and Lucas jumped and turned to look into the connected living room. In the newly opened doorway, Yangyang stood staring at Baekhyun and smiling like it was Christmas. Glowing with an energy Baekhyun was not prepared to handle, he flew in the kitchen and grabbed Baekhyun by the shoulders. “You’re still here! It’s a miracle!” He lifted his hands to the sky and whispered, “Thank you.”

Baekhyun took a step back, reestablishing his personal space and strategically positioning himself in front of the coffee pot. He did _not_ want to see what this guy looked like on caffeine.

Just as predicted, once one was up and making noise, it wasn’t long until more followed. There was a stirring in the room Yangyang had just emerged from, and Xiaojun appeared in the doorway wrapped in a blanket and scowling at anyone who made eye contact. He tugged the door handle, and there was a crunch as drywall crumbled to the floor, leaving a handle-sized dent in the wall from Yangyang’s excitement.

Baekhyun winced at the grouchiness empathically steaming off of Xiaojun and instinctively stepped out of the way of the coffee pot again.

Yangyang was unaffected by the negative aura and bounced on his toes before taking off toward the stairs to the second floor, shouting on his way, “I’m gonna go wake Jongin. We have a lot of ground to cover if we want to beat the game today.”

If the grumpiness surging through the Legend’s connection was any indication, Baekhyun had a feeling “Jongin” was already awake.

“He’s not a morning…” he started to warn, but Yangyang was already out of earshot. “...person.”

Luckily, Kai wasn’t out of telepathic range. _“Fair warning. A wake up call is coming your way.”_ He hoped the two-second warning would subside any Red Force reaction that could be bubbling under the surface. On second thought, maybe he should go up and intervene.

By the time Baekhyun got to the room where Kai was curled up in a pile of blankets on the floor, the shades were open, the radio was on, and Yangyang was under brutal pillow attack by the normally calm but currently aggravated Winwin.

Winwin grabbed the tail of Yangyang’s shirt and practically pulled it off, reeling him in for more close-range combat. Between Yangyang’s shoulder blades the digits 10110-V jumped out and caught Baekhyun’s attention. Baekhyun himself had been given a very similar tattoo in the same spot on his upper back. The label 04-EXO had been Taemin’s way of keeping track of the Legends in the Overdose Lab as if he didn’t already know them all personally.

Immortal ink on an immortal body. Baekhyun had hoped the eclipse would have fixed it, but he hadn’t been that lucky.

At the sight of Baekhyun in the doorway, Yangyang fled for cover behind him and appealed to his attacker. “You wouldn’t kill me in front of our guests, right?”

Winwin tucked the pillow under his arm for later use and said, “Be glad we’re on the second floor. If I were grounded….”

“Now, now, there’s no need to tase anybody.” Yangyang tentatively stepped out from behind his shield and dramatically sniffed the air. “Can’t you smell that? Anonymous here already made coffee, and I know for a fact we have fresh strawberries in the fridge that Kun made us all promise to save for you.”

Winwin’s expression softened. “Kun’s back?”

“Well...ah...not yet. He made us promise yesterday before the whole….”

Winwin threw his last pillow at Yangyang on his way out the door. Yangyang whined but followed.

Baekhyun approached the mound of blankets covering all but Kai’s foot. He knew better than to try to stir Kai at all, so he just sat on the floor next to him, giving a solid foot of buffer room in between. _“You can come out now.”_

Kai kept his face covered. _“You need to sleep too, you know.”_

_“I’ll be fine. I’m a Legend.”_

Kai ripped the blankets down revealing brown eyes that were clear in thought and not charged with red anger. _“A Legend who needs to sleep and eat and do all the other things we need to do to survive.”_

_“I’m fine. Don’t worry. If I was tired I would have woken you.”_

Baekhyun had been on the receiving end of Kai’s pity more and more frequently as the time passed, but it didn’t make it any easier to see his looks of sadness and not feel at least partially responsible.

_“Please don’t do this to yourself. Just…”_ Kai’s words paused but his emotions continued to give him away. _“Wake me up tonight, okay?”_

Baekhyun made no promises. He scrambled for a way to point the conversation some other direction when a sudden burst of electronic music exploded on the floor below. The force of the sound waves alone bounced Kai a few inches into the air and his anxiety about their whole situation did the rest of the work, shooting him to his feet with a hand clutching his heart.

“YANGYANG!”

Baekhyun couldn’t recognize whose voice was calling the threat over the music, but he feared for Yangyang’s life.

The volume rapidly decreased until the music could barely be heard anymore, and in the new quiet, Yangyang’s voice bounced off the walls of the staircase. “Whoops. TV was turned a bit louder than I had expe….”

There was a yelp, a struggle, and then a true silence that Baekhyun could appreciate.

Kai took a deep breath, but before he could finish recentering himself, another head popped in the doorway.

“Was that the Power theme song I just heard?” Hendery looked to be in way too good of a mood about the song that just blasted him out of bed. He motioned the two of them out of the room and followed them downstairs. “You guys must really want to play. Most of 127 just sneak off in the night when we have them over.”

Upon seeing the refrigerator, Kai walked straight for the kitchen, joining Lucas and Winwin at the table eating cereal and strawberries respectively.

Rather than getting roped into eating something, Baekhyun chose the alternative and headed over to where Yangyang was sitting in the living room. Yangyang had calmed significantly, but his new hairstyle wasn’t reflective of that calm. It was standing on end like he had just been electrocuted.

He glanced over his shoulder at the kitchen and then back to Baekhyun. “Don’t mess with Winwin. He’s in a mood.”

“Don’t mind him. He’ll come around,” Hendery said as he grabbed the remote off of the floor. After checking that the volume was at an appropriate level, he hit the unmute button, reawakening the digital theme song that was now permanently ingrained in Baekhyun’s mind.

In red block letters, the word “POWER” lit up on the TV screen.

Baekhyun picked up the headset sitting next to Yangyang on the couch. Its wires coiled around the floor and merged with a tangle of cords hooked up to a single power strip. “You said this game was VR?”

Yangyang held out the left and right hand controllers. “It is, but I have a setting turned on so we can see what you’re seeing in the helmet on the TV. It’s also only the most realistic and detailed game I’ve ever played.”

Baekhyun secured the mask around his forehead but waited to put it over his eyes.

Kai approached the couch with a bagel in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other. He looked from Yangyang to the game and back to Baekhyun again. _“If anything weird happens, I’m teleporting us both out of here.”_

Baekhyun nodded, then pulled the mask down on his face. The world transformed around him and took the shape of the game’s menu screen.

Yangyang’s voice sounded next to him. “You can just reach out and touch the ‘New Game’ button. Don’t worry. We’ll tell you if you’re about to hit anybody, although you seem a little more aware of your surroundings than _some_ people.”

“That was one time!” Hendery defended.

“I almost died.”

Baekhyun blocked out the squabble and hovered his hand over the words “New Game” floating in front of him. The letters lit up red when he grabbed them. Then everything went black.

The game’s audio kicked in before the visual. A gentle alarm pulsed through his headphones, and the sound of whirring machinery and metal footsteps echoed around him. The robot that was Baekhyun’s character made a chirping sound followed by text read by an automated female voice appearing on the screen.

“Booting System RF-05. RF-05 System Activated. Activation Success. Engage First Combat on EXO Planet #1795. Acquisition of Target’s Power Orbs In Progress. System Filing for Danger. Warning. Data Updating. System Scanning for Power Orbs. Scan Success. Downloading Coordinates for Power Orb of Flight. Download Complete.”

The image slowly came into focus. Baekhyun, as RF-05, stood in a metal hanger, the faint glow of red emergency backup lights illuminating his path to a metal door. He reached for the control panel on the wall. His right arm looked like a long metal claw and his left arm seemed to have no function.

“Wait, you’re not left-handed, are you?” Yangyang’s voice burst into the integrity of the game. “Because I think there’s a setting for that.”

“No, this is fine. But what do I do?” When his claw touched the control panel, it beeped and his screen zoomed in on it.

“You can just bypass all the tutorials. I’ll explain everything.”

Baekhyun tensed at the foreign hand guiding his arm toward the map icon. The globe of EXO Planet that popped up was almost unrecognizable. Each of its twelve regions were facing a different apocalypse.

“This is the first level,” Yangyang said as he used Baekhyun's hand to select a region that looked to be the least affected by catastrophe.

As soon as his claw touched the button, a mechanical countdown started. Baekhyun felt more than a little helpless when RF-05’s arm and legs retracted, leaving him as just a pod being passed around by other robotic arms, preparing him for launch.

“3...2...1…”

The screen shot forward, launching him straight through the metal runway, the red emergency lights flicking past in his peripherals. Baekhyun’s physical body rejected what he was seeing, and he tipped backward, catching himself on the couch.

_“Are you okay?!”_ Kai’s panic was nothing new, but somehow he managed to attach a new sense of urgency to his question.

Baekhyun squeezed his eyes shut and pressed down his nausea. _“I’m fine. Just dizzy.”_

“Oops, sorry,” Yangyang laughed. “I should’ve warned you about that first launch. It’s a trip. They really should have caught that in the testing phase.”

Baekhyun shook off the sick feeling, for once actually thankful for all of his experience recovering from teleportation. All those techniques were coming in real handy right now.

When Baekhyun opened his eyes again, he was standing in the middle of a deserted city. Skyscrapers rose ominously around him, the glass in most of their windows shattered and jagged. “Where is everybody?” he asked.

For once Yangyang kept his mouth shut, allowing the cutscene to answer.

A man wearing a heavy duty oxygen mask and protective headphones peeked out the door of one of the buildings then jogged over to where RF-05 had landed. “Thank goodness you’re here,” he said, his voice buzzing through the microphone in his mask. “Just in time too. We lasted as long as we could, but the oxygen only stretches so far.” He knocked on the tank strapped to his back. If the mask weren’t covering his face, his expression would have been a smile making light of the situation.

Suddenly, the volume in Baekhyun’s headphones maxed out, and something shot through the sky like a comet in broad daylight.

The man stumbled at the sound wave and pressed his noise canceling headphones to his ears. He followed the trajectory of the comet to where it disappeared on the horizon. “That would be our guy.”

RF-05’s sensors located the flying object and zoomed in. While the details were a blurry mess, there was no doubt that the shape in the sky was a man.

“Doesn’t seem to be terribly aggressive but has caused quite a bit of damage nonetheless.” He leaned in like he was whispering, but his attempt at quieting his voice was unsuccessful as the microphone continued its output at the same volume. “Our equipment can only record speeds up to Mach 10. I assure you, he can surpass that speed by the thousands.”

A series of equations scrolled across RF-05’s vision attempting to calculate the speed of the object that just flew past but came up inconclusive and that more data was required.

“Aggressive or not, this region can no longer sustain human life. The noise is one thing, but the oxygen level…” He looked at a panel on his wrist and shook his head. “You’re lucky you’re a robot. He can’t take your breath away—literally, I mean,” he quickly clarified. “Without the whole breathing hassle, your biggest challenge will be catching him. If only you could figure out a way to trap him…. But first, you’d have to get him to come down.”

The NPC’s dialogue stopped and he assumed a rather detailed but funny animation of ducking and covering whenever the flying guy shot through the air above him. Clearly Baekhyun was supposed to do something now.

He moved his right arm up, which caused RF-05 to raise his claw. Wiggling his fingers seemed to spin the claw, and holding a fist brought up a targeting scope.

When he moved the arm around while targeting, RF-05’s heads-up-display automatically highlighted certain structure points of the surrounding buildings and abandoned cars. Baekhyun wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, but he opened his hand and a huge, blue plasma projectile shot out of RF-05’s claw toward the crashed truck that he’d been aiming at.

It exploded, but the fire didn’t last long as light blue text appeared on the HUD saying that there were low oxygen levels so fire attack power was lowered by 50%.

Suddenly, RF-05’s sensors started to flash red warnings, and Baekhyun watched as the red dot on the map in the corner of the screen was heading straight toward him at amazing speeds.

Baekhyun barely even had time to wonder how you were supposed to move when the street in front of RF-05 exploded. When the dust settled, there was a man standing in the crater of asphalt. He dashed forward and grabbed RF-05’s claw before launching into the sky with the robot in tow.

Sensors on the HUD were going crazy as the sky and clouds streaked by. Baekhyun only caught a few of the text boxes that popped up. One of them was saying that RF-05’s claw was taking damage and the other was screaming about the rapid altitude change as the robot was pulled higher and higher.

Then, all at once, everything paused. Baekhyun’s view out of RF-05’s HUD showed the blackness of space and distant stars for just a peaceful second. The edges of the HUD started to crystalize as a pulsating warning flashed in the corner about the low temperature.

Baekhyun turned around and RF-05’s small, red eye rotated on its head. He eventually positioned himself until he could look back down at EXO Planet. He could see a good number of the regions from here. One was almost covered in water in an ocean that shouldn’t be there, and another was sprouting dark gray smoke from volcanoes that weren’t supposed to exist. Then there was of course the region where RF-05 started. It looked the most intact though that didn’t mean much considering there was no oxygen there anymore apparently.

Suddenly, RF-05’s sensors blared again. The red dot this time was fuzzy and blinked out likely due to the temperature warning from earlier. Then the flying man appeared in front of the robot.

Baekhyun almost fell down.

He could feel the overloaded emotions of Kai through his bond as the two of them reeled from what they were seeing in front of them.

_Kris. That….that’s Kris._

Baekhyun felt lightheaded. In front of his eyes, in this game of all places, he was seeing one of the Legends he’d been so desperate to find. His mind prodded forward on instinct to try to connect telepathically with him, but of course there was nothing. It was just a game.

There were some things that were off though. Kris’s face was a little sharper. His hair was a little longer. His eyebrows somehow even thicker. It was like someone was trying to create a caricature of Kris or was trying to recall what he looked like after not having seen him for a long time.

Then the moment ended. Kris’s character smiled cruelly, the burning planet behind him making his eyes look wild. Then he grabbed RF-05’s arm again and hurled him toward the planet. Baekyhun felt dizzy from the sky spinning all around him.

Several more alerts popped up, warning RF-05 of the altitude and temperature again, but Baekyhun was helpless to do anything.

RF-05 finally landed in the middle of what should have been a busy city intersection. The HUD flashed that RF-05 had taken several points of damage from the fall and his health bar dropped into the yellow on the top of the screen.

Suddenly, the robot’s head was being spun around forcefully until the eye was looking up at Kris, who stood with one foot pinning the robot down into the crater it had created.

A huge label flashed in front of the screen. YIFAN: INVADER OF FLIGHT.

A long health bar appeared over Yifan’s head though when Baekhyun looked to see how many hit points he had, there was just a big question mark instead of numbers. Yifan stood up and adjusted the necklace he wore. The softball-sized orange jewel that hung off the chain caught the sun on one of its round edges, and RF-05’s sensors scanned it and highlighted it.

A new mission—“obtain power orb: flight”—popped up in the corner of the screen as a subcategory of the main quest tasks.

Then Yifan took off again into the sky, shattering windows off of the nearby buildings, and RF-05 was left there.

The NPC from earlier rushed over and helped pull RF-05 out of the rubble. He was saying something, but Baekhyun wasn’t paying attention. He subconsciously latched on to Kai to steady himself mentally though it wasn’t like Kai was much help in that area.

“So what do you think so far?” Yangyang’s voice cut through the fog in his mind. “That intro sequence with Yifan taking you to space is probably one of my favorite parts of the game.”

There was a low comment from Xiaojun about how it made him nauseous. However, Hendery was right on board with Yangyang though he tried to say he had another part he liked during the Kyungsoo level, but Yangyang stopped him before he could spoil anything.

Baekhyun took a deep breath and pulled the VR mask off his face.

“Hey, what’re you doing? The game is just getting started.” Yangyang looked at where Baekhyun had set down the controllers, disappointed.

“I just need a breather,” Baekhyun said, trying to sound like he wasn’t just on the verge of a mental breakdown. “Quick question: who made this game again?”

Yangyang grabbed the game packaging off of the floor and presented it forward, his finger pointing to the logo in the corner. “That’s the cool thing. SM produced it. Which means…” A proud smile spread across his face. “Well, they had to get their inspiration from somewhere. I guess you haven't played much yet, but did the powers in the game remind you of anything?”

“No!” Kai blurted then immediately looked to Baekhyun for help.

Yangyang deflated into a pout at Kai’s answer. “Really? These powers don’t remind you of anyone in particular?” He casually shot a beam of light from his palm at the ceiling then loudly whispered at Xiaojun and Hendery, “Help me out a little, guys.”

Hendery instantly jumped up and stared at a potted plant on the coffee table. Xiaojun, on the other hand, didn’t move from where he was sitting, but his face slowly grew redder as steam visibly clouded around him, evaporating off his body into the air.

A quick gust of wind blew Baekhyun’s hair from behind, and he turned to see Lucas, still sitting in the kitchen, grinning.

“It’s us!” Yangyang exclaimed. As if to prove his point further, he teleported a few feet over, nearly landing on top of Kai, who looked to be about ready to teleport out of his own skin. “The game’s based off of us and our powers!”

“Most people don’t believe it though,” Xiaojun said as he wiped condensation off his forehead. “The more popular theory is that it’s inspired by that old Tree of Life myth.”

Yangyang’s whole demeanor darkened. “How dare you bring up anything relating to _him_ in my own house.”

Xiaojun rolled his eyes. “Yangyang has deemed the strongest supporter of that Tree of Life theory his mortal enemy. This ‘enemy’ goes by the screen name of—”

“ _Zeus_ ,” Yangyang growled.

“Yes, yes, eternal grudge.” Xiaojun waved it off. “But we know the truth. The powers are just too similar to...Hendery, what are you doing?”

Hendery still stood in the center of the room, eyes glued to the potted plant. Without breaking his focus, he explained, “I’m making this plant grow even _slower_ than normal.”

Yangyang seemed to forget his vengeance on Zeus and started to argue that Hendery didn’t have an ability like that, but the argument was cut short when a beeping sound came from the front door and the lock clicked open.

The man who opened the door was someone Baekhyun didn’t recognize, but based on the room’s reaction, he had a pretty good guess as to who it was. If he could silence a Yangyang-dominant quarrel just by stepping in the house, he had to be none other than this group’s leader, Kun. Though, he wasn’t looking very leader-esque right now.

Kun looked frail and despite the warm weather outside, seemed to be shivering. He leaned heavily on the door to slip off his shoes at the entryway, but as soon as he lifted a foot, his body swayed off center and his leg gave out from under him. He smacked his hand on the wall, just barely preventing his full collapse.

Xiaojun was up in seconds and ran over to support him. Kun looked humiliated but had no choice but to accept the help as Xiaojun walked him into the living room and sat him on a chair. He shrunk into his seat, avoiding the many pairs of eyes staring at him.

Baekhyun wasn’t sure if Kun was just too out of it to notice the two strangers in the room or simply didn’t have the energy to acknowledge Baekhyun and Kai’s presence. Either way, he looked to be inches from passing out.

“Kun?” Yangyang asked softly, but Kun was unresponsive.

A series of glances exchanged between the WeishenV members before ultimately landing on Kun again.

The scraping sound of a chair dragging across the kitchen floor caused just about everyone to flinch. Lucas had been quiet all morning but was the only one brave enough to break the ice. It was like a new personality lit up inside him as he sauntered over to the living room, hopped over the back of the couch, and landed with a bounce. “Are you feeling better?” he asked, forcing his voice to sound as normal as possible. “You look, uh...well, at least your eyes aren’t red.”

As far as compliments on Kun’s appearance could go, this was about as good as it was going to get. Kun looked like he had seen a ghost and was maybe still seeing it.

Baekhyun wanted to believe Lucas was as over the incident as he sounded, but his emotions revealed him to be a bag of nerves just like everyone else in the room. Hopefully he could uphold his front because it seemed to rattle Kun from whatever trance he had been stuck in.

“Lucas, I…” Kun started.

“It’s okay, man. I’m a strong guy. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Kun looked at Lucas’s bruises and dropped his gaze again, seeming to not have the strength to argue about it. “If I ever do that again,” he said to the floor. “Get away from me. Get everyone away. As far as you can. Because when I’m like that, I can’t stop.”

“But you _did_ stop,” Lucas insisted.

Kun shook his head, unwilling to recognize Lucas’s narrow escape as any form of victory. “Just promise me you’ll stay away. That you won’t try to reason with me, and you’ll call Director Taemin.”

Even though Baekhyun was already 100% sure Taemin was involved, the mention of his name made him suddenly more interested. He hadn’t expected Kun to even know of Taemin, especially not know him personally.

“What exactly does Director Taemin do for you again?” Lucas asked. “How does he fix it? Maybe one of us could—”

“He helps me.” Kun left his explanation very vague. “But most importantly, he’s not afraid to…” He took a shaky breath and slowly released it, circulating the air in the room that had been stagnant ever since he walked in. “...not afraid to stop me...by any means necessary, if it comes to that.”

There was a beat of silence before Xiaojun put a hand on Kun’s shoulder and spoke. “That’s not going to happen. You rarely have flare-ups and the director is always able to help.”

Kun stared at his hands laying in his lap. “Thanks, guys.” He stood and attempted to look like he could balance without the help of the back of the chair. “I’m going to go rest for a while. I’m exhausted.”

He didn’t seem to notice Yangyang’s previous damage to the wall. If he did he ignored it and silently closed the door behind him.

The group stared at the door still processing the scene that had just unfolded. The quiet that laid across the room coated the almost hollow sounds of the game in the background so that they almost didn’t even sound real.

_“We have to help them.”_ Kai was soaking up the negative emotions from the room and leaking them into the empathic bond without reserve.

Baekhyun, on the other hand, blocked all those emotions out, including his own.

WeishenV was a direct link to Taemin. After meeting them, their progress in locating the other Legends had increased exponentially in less than 24 hours. This was a lead they couldn’t afford to give up.

_“No,”_ Baekhyun said over Kai’s mental blubbering. _“We have to use them.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you had one of EXO's powers, which one would you want?


	10. Back to the Reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Phase 5: Back to the Reality. Reality after the deeper dream isn’t quite the same as the reality before the deeper dream.” — Narrator in “NCTMentary Ep 5 Back to the Reality”

**Previously in Chap 6:**

“Director?”

Taemin blinked, but he still couldn’t wake up from this nightmare. Johnny had never acted out, and here he was—right in front of the entrance to the most secret part of his entire operation. This might as well happen today.

He didn’t particularly care why Johnny was there. It wouldn’t matter so long as Johnny didn’t remember. Minho was already wiping Mark’s memories. What’s one more?

He reached out to grab Johnny’s arm, and with strength he knew Johnny didn’t know he had, he yanked him inside and let the door lock itself behind them.

* * *

**The Next Day**

Other than managing 127 as the team’s leader, Taeyong’s other main job was to provide private security for the top floor of the SM Building. CEO Onew, Director Taemin, and whatever VVIP representatives they happened to be entertaining in the big conference room were Taeyong’s responsibility to protect—of course against any intruders but mostly against anyone who didn’t have an appointment that Secretary Taeyeon couldn’t fend off with just a stern word. It was honestly the cushiest job outside of maybe Jaehyun and Jungwoo’s monitor duty. All he had to do was stand there and maintain a balance of looking intimidating while strangely trustworthy, which with Taeyong’s big eyes and intense gaze, he had down to a science.

The morning after he had been down in the tunnels with Johnny, Taeyong was honestly avoiding the director. He kept wondering when Director Taemin was going to summon him into his office to reprimand him. It felt like he was a kid in school waiting to get called down to the principal’s office, so, like a kid, he avoided interacting with the director. He escaped for most of the morning by talking with the overly friendly CEO who was more than happy to have a listening ear as he prattled on and on about how much he loved and missed his WeishenV kids. There came a point where Taeyong almost wished that the director would summon him. Surely there was nothing the director could do that was worse torture than having to smile and laugh at CEO Onew for an hour and a half.

However, after the director had said nothing to him about the incident the entire morning, Taeyong started to wonder if maybe Johnny had covered for him. He had been out of sight around the corner when the hidden door apparently opened. Director Taemin never saw him, but it still took him a while to even consider it a possibility that the director didn’t know he was down there too. After all, the director seemed to have a supernatural knowledge of everything that went on in the building, so it was easy for Taeyong to forget that he was human like the rest of them.

When his shift ended, he found Johnny back in their office on the 127th floor at his desk finishing up his daily end-of-shift reports. Taeyong smiled as he walked over, once again reminded that for however frustrating his teammates might be, they were the most hardworking, dependable people he’d ever met.

Taeyong slid the freshly brewed coffee cup in his hand across Johnny’s desk. “ _It’s no Ridin’ Coffee, but I hope it’s acceptable as a thank you. And an apology._ ”

Johnny hesitated before taking the coffee. “ _I’m not going to say ‘no’ to free caffeine, but what is this an apology for?_ ”

Taeyong crossed his arms loosely and looked down at his shoes, feeling like a little kid. “ _You know you didn’t have to cover for me. I’m the leader. I’m the one who’s supposed to take the heat for stupid stuff you do, dummy. Not the other way around._ ”

“ _Seriously, man. What are you talking about? Did I miss something?_ ”

Taeyong sensed genuine confusion from Johnny and quirked an eyebrow. “ _Come on. Aren’t you in trouble with the director?_ ”

“ _Yesterday the director asked me to help Mark with his errand, but why would I be in trouble for that? Did he say something?_ ”

Taeyong paused. He assumed the director was angry, but looking back on it, he didn’t have any evidence for it. Maybe instead of punishing Johnny, he just asked him to help Mark. That would make sense as to why he came back with Mark in the morning.

“ _No. It’s nothing the director said. It’s just, I thought we would get in trouble for snooping around in the tunnels for that door, you know?_ ”

“ _Wait a minute. Why would we be in the tunnels?_ ”

“ _Yesterday. I asked you to help me look for the door in the tunnels that leads into the SM Tower basement._ ” Taeyong spoke slowly like he was talking to a child.

“ _When would I even have had time to do that?_ ” Johnny rubbed his head as Taeyong picked up on the telltale signs of a headache from the other. “ _I told you. I was on an errand all afternoon. Ask Mark._ ”

Taeyong frowned. Maybe the director made Johnny swear to keep what he saw inside the doors a secret?

He probed Johnny’s empathic channel much more thoroughly than normal, searching for any flares of guilt or fear that would signal that he was lying or even just messing with his leader. Johnny was a great actor. It was why he was so good at his job, but even he couldn’t mask what he felt from another member of 127 who could literally read his emotions directly from his brain.

But Taeyong’s efforts only confirmed all the more that Johnny was one-hundred percent genuine. It wasn’t a cover story. He really believed that he never stepped foot in the tunnels yesterday. But why?

“ _Are you alright, boss?_ ”

Taeyong quickly shook his head. “ _Nevermind. Forget I said anything._ ”

Just as Johnny couldn’t hide his confusion from Taeyong, Taeyong couldn’t hide his worry and growing anxiety from Johnny. Johnny looked at 127’s leader with deep concern, but he nodded anyway.

Taeyong quickly left and went into the bathroom. He ran a shaking hand under the motion-sensing faucet to then wipe his face with the freezing water.

His hand didn’t take too kindly to the cold temperature, and he immediately smashed his hand palm-down on the granite countertop, gritting his teeth through the spasms that made his fingers twitch painfully. After he used his left hand to press down over his right to add extra pressure, he was able to successfully keep his hand from curling up. After a minute or so, the episode passed. He stood there, hands flat on the counter as he hunched over the sink as he breathed harshly through his teeth. His thoughts drifted back to what Johnny said.

Taeyong wracked his brain for any possible explanation for the obvious flaw in Johnny’s memory. What happened to him in the basement? And what did it mean about Mark who was supposedly on the same errand?

And there was an even more terrifying thought. He took a shuddering breath. Taeyong himself had been summoned to the basement for errands once.

The same insatiable curiosity that drove him to the tunnels with Johnny was now absolutely screaming at him to figure out what goes on in the basement. Although, for the first time, he wondered if he might regret what he’d find down there.

He raised his head to look at his own distressed expression. There were big bags under his wide eyes. Maybe he just needed some sleep?

Taeyong wiped his face off with a towel. What was he thinking? If he couldn’t trust the director, the gravity of that situation was almost unthinkable. He didn’t even want to think of what kind of position that would put him in. Not to mention where that would leave his boys.

He left the bathroom and headed straight for the crash room. It used to be a storage room that had large filing cabinets which they threw out after digitizing all their records. Then they put in two rickety bunk beds that Johnny and Jaehyun put together.

The crash room was meant to be just that—a place to crash. Just in case for some reason any member of 127 needed a nap or couldn’t go back to the dorm for the night, they could sleep there. However, because it was so much more convenient than having to go all the way back to the dorm, the crash room instead became their primary place to sleep. Though their beds back in the dorm were marginally comfier, Taeyong was glad that everyone stayed in the crash room because then he could make sure everyone got to work on time—flipping them out of their mattresses if necessary.

When Taeyong entered the crash room after talking with Johnny, he didn’t even bother to take his suit jacket off as he fell face-first into his blankets. Jaehyun made a grumpy noise from the bed above as Taeyong’s impact must have shaken the bunk and woken him up.

However, sleep left as quickly as it came. Only a few hours later, he found himself staring up at the underside of Jaehyun’s bunk as his thoughts raced unrestrained. Call it a work hazard, but Taeyong literally couldn’t rest until he’d done something about this mystery of the basement. He pulled himself as quietly as he could out of bed.

Between when Taeyong fell asleep and now when he woke up, he could see that the other members of the day shift had clocked out and found empty bunks to collapse into. From where Taeyong sat, he could see Yuta starfished out on the top bunk of bunk bed set number two with his limbs dangling down near where Johnny was curled up below, looking unusually small. After Taeyong confirmed his headcount, he crept past them and quietly slipped outside.

Because Taeyong worked top floor security, he wasn’t down in the office much during work hours to know if there was much of a difference in office atmosphere between the night and day shifts. He knew that Doyoung had taken his place and was up on the top floor doing security there for all the workaholic company higher-ups, and he could see that poor Mark was knocked out on the couch in the lobby area. From across the room, he could see from the monitors on the feed display that Haechan must have convinced Taeil to patrol with him tonight. Taeyong knew Taeil was probably just avoiding paperwork, but at least he was doing something productive with his procrastination by going with Haechan.

Jungwoo on the other hand, wasn’t doing anything remotely work-related. He should have been sitting in front of the display, looking over the perimeter CCTVs or scanning street cams for those two fugitives the director was after. Instead, he was standing a few feet away with the latest edition Neo VR Helmet strapped over his eyes as he played that Power game he liked.

Taeyong had once been furious and harshly scolded Jungwoo in an uncharacteristic rage for not taking his job seriously. But after he calmed down, Doyoung took him aside and reminded him that Jungwoo wasn’t around a few years back when 127’s superior was taken from under their very noses—never to be seen again. The kid just didn’t understand the shame that Taeyong had been carrying.

But this wasn’t to say that Jungwoo wasn’t valuable to the team. The kid was such a tech genius that he had apparently written up an entire AI program that would scan the camera feeds itself and only notify Jungwoo should there be something it flagged. He didn’t have any doubt in Jungwoo’s tech’s accuracy, but it was at the very least unprofessional for him to play video games during work hours. However, only this time he would let him get away with it because it allowed Taeyong to use the computer without anyone asking questions.

Taeyong quietly walked around Jungwoo, avoiding nearly getting punched in the face when Jungwoo suddenly struck out, and slipped on the display’s Neo Ring that Jungwoo left on the desk.

“Bring up every security camera footage of any 127 member entering the floor 1 basement elevator. Trim to ten seconds. Organize by date. Label by the member’s name. Once complete, encrypt folder under Taeyong, and send it to Taeyong’s Neo Pad.”

A little animation of a white dog with fluffy black ears popped up—the avatar which represented Jungwoo’s program nicknamed Snoopy. Snoopy gave a thumbs up before blinking away to carry out the orders.

Taeyong turned back around, feeling guilty. He knew that 127 were rather morally grey from an outsider’s perspective, but their one rule that they strictly followed was to always protect each other above everything else. He’d never hidden something like this from his teammates before. And especially not the director. What was he doing?

He quietly walked back toward the crashroom. Jungwoo jumped up and down—apparently having just beat a level—none the wiser to Taeyong’s presence.

As he passed the sofas in the lounge, he heard Mark say something. For a second, Taeyong thought Mark was talking to him, so he turned to look at him properly. The kid was sleeping upright in a very uncomfortable position with his Neo Pad still on his lap. Mark’s mouth was moving, but it wasn’t until Taeyong got closer that he could hear what he was saying.

“Help. Help them. The basement. Help them. There.”

Taeyong suppressed chills. He’d never given much thought to Mark’s strange sleep-talking before. Yet this time, the mention of the basement sent ice up Taeyong’s spine. He wasn’t going to get a wink of sleep.

He quietly went back into the crashroom and covered himself with a blanket before opening up his bright Neo Pad. The download from Snoopy was still at fourty-four percent. But it was already easy to see who the member who most often entered the basement was.

Was it a coincidence that the director always seemed to ask Mark to help him? Perhaps it was time to see if Mark could shed some light on what happened during those errands?

Taeyong put his Neo Pad to sleep and rubbed a hand over his face. He had a feeling that it was going to be a long night.

* * *

It had already been a long night.

There was at least some paperwork in Taemin’s out-going tray, but it was rather underwhelming compared to the huge stack that taunted him from his in-going tray. Trying to keep his plan he’d been working on for over a millennium from falling apart at the seams had consumed most of his time, and his normal office work had subsequently piled up while he was down in the lab.

And honestly, SM stuff had never felt more trivial than it had lately. Not in the context of, oh, say two Legends suddenly appearing on EXO Planet.

Taemin dropped his pen and rested his throbbing head in his hands.

Baekhyun and Kai were the most slippery Legends. It was hard to capture someone who could teleport or turn invisible, but they weren’t on Earth anymore. This was Neo City, and Neo City was Taemin’s. He’d cemented the Smart Manufacturing brand so firmly into EXO Planet’s capital that the entire city would crumble if not for what his company produced. And he had every asset under his influence searching for the Legends.

Unfortunately, his best asset was still onroute. Taemin had specifically designed an artificially intelligent robot to track and capture the Legends who had gotten a lot of practice with multiple close attempts over the past 15 years. But he was still on Earth when Kai and Baekhyun used the wormhole. Now it would take Taemin’s hunting bot weeks to fly to EXO Planet. In the meantime, even without him, Taemin should have been able to get at least a glimpse of the two Legends’ location. They weren’t _that_ good. They were just immortal, not perfect.

“Yoo hoo!”

Taemin looked up to see the smiley face of CEO Onew. He was peeking in Taemin’s office and waving a hand enthusiastically like a small child.

“How’s it going? You look wiped out.”

Taemin looked at the large stacks of unfinished work on his desk and shrugged. “It’s...going.”

“What a hardworking director you are. You and I both could use a break, and I happen to have an idea!” Onew stepped fully into Taemin’s office and clasped his hands together eagerly. “How about we have another dinner with WeishenV and 127 tomorrow?”

Taemin’s perfect acting facade almost cracked. He didn’t understand how the CEO didn’t remember the absolute disaster of a dinner the last one was. Though WeishenV and 127 were more alike than they even knew, they sure managed to whip up quite the friendly rivalry.

“I wish I could attend, but I have to decline. I have a budget meeting to prepare for, but I could certainly arrange the dinner for you.” He could find some time to do it with all the spare time he had between re-erasing 127 members’ memories and keeping Kun from imploding.

“Really? Are you sure you won’t mind missing out? We could postpone it until after your meeting.”

Taemin shook his head a little too fast. He hoped Onew didn’t notice. “No. I see them often enough. You can have them all to yourself.”

“Thank you, Taeminie!” Onew beamed. “I was just really missing my WeishenV darlings. And there’s still that new member of 127 I haven’t even met yet!”

“He’s certainly something.” If Taemin could barely hide the growl of frustration building inside his throat at the mere mention of Mark, maybe it was for the best that he’d not attend the dinner. The next time he saw Mark—or Kun for that matter—would be too soon.

“Oh, I’m so excited! I’ll go ahead and reserve the 10th floor conference room for tomorrow and order the chicken if you would just tell your boys the time. Thanks again, Taemin!”

When Onew closed the door to his office, Taemin had to take a deep breath. He winced as the area around his shoulder wound tugged taut when he shifted. That blasted gun shot had messed up his shoulder likely permanently. And he couldn’t even hold out with the hope that an Eclipse would reset it. With the amount of metal in his body, apparently he didn’t have enough flesh to qualify for the supernatural healing that the Eclipses brought.

Taemin felt his eyes flare red. It was another thing that the Legends got that he didn’t. Even the Eclipses were on their side.

The Eclipses had always been a thorn in his side when trying to enact his plan. Clearly the Eclipse activating the wormholes between Earth and EXO Planet was how Kai and Baekhyun had been able to leave Earth. Kai wouldn’t have been powerful enough to teleport them the distance otherwise. At his most powerful, the Kai could have done it easily, but not when Taemin still had Luhan—the other half of Kai’s power—locked in the SM Tower basement.

The Eclipses were the universe’s way of maintaining balance. When EXO Planet and Earth aligned in a literal shadow of how things were supposed to be, the two planets were briefly one again. And with that, connections between the planets were brought to life in the form of the wormholes. Taemin himself used them in order to move his operation to EXO Planet from Earth after the disaster that was the Overdose Lab.

But the most important thing the Eclipses did was renew the Legends. The Legends—the physical manifestations of the elements of the universe—had mortal bodies that could be hurt and even age albeit very, very slowly. However, the Eclipses kept them young and healed any wounds they sustained.

So it wasn’t a surprise that Kai and Baekhyun made their way to EXO Planet during the last Eclipse a month ago. What was surprising was that the Eclipse before that happened only 5 years earlier. Usually there were hundreds of years, even thousands between Eclipses.

Taemin couldn’t help but think that it was actually his own fault. The universe wouldn’t need to reset everything if Taemin would stop throwing it off balance. However, he took it as confirmation that he was actually getting closer to achieving his goal.

He knew better than to even think of ridding the universe of the Legends. Their jobs were important. There needed to be beings—or _a_ being—in charge of the elements or risk the unraveling of reality as one knew it. So if Taemin switched who those beings were—if he infused the Legends’ elements into _himself_ —then there wouldn’t be a need for those traitorous 12 anymore. And he could finally have revenge.

He glanced a look out the window. From 130 floors up, the entirety of Neo City was shining below in a beautiful nightscape. Each and every light that glowed from the Neo Advertisement Boards in the shopping district all the way to the patrol lights that shone into the desert to help guard the edge of the Neo Zone was powered by SM Neo Culture Technology. The ghostly blue-ish glow of the Neo Tree was distinctly visible amongst all of the bright, white lights—light that shone with a distinctly familiar color of the twelve crystalline orbs that pulsed with dormant but raw power in the safe in the wall behind Taemin’s chair. Without looking, Taemin could sense the restlessness of the pure energy of the universe contained in those glass orbs. Soon all of that power would be Taemin’s to wield. And this time, there would be no Tree of Life to play favorites and stop him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On a different note: What is your favorite Taemin moment? (in real life) We <3 Taemin
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	11. Superhuman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “We’re not in control. You who’s with me. So we just get bigger. The power is getting stronger when we raise the roof.” —NCT2020’s “Raise the Roof”

The monitor station in 127’s office had six main Neo Monitors with four smaller optional hologram displays that could be summoned up should the user wish. And every single one of them was flashing bright red in tandem to a ground-shaking alarm that blared from the speakers.

“ _What’s going on? Are we under attack?!_ ” Taeyong saw Mark stumble out of the bathroom.

He immediately looked toward the display to see a goofy animation of Snoopy screaming and running across all of the monitors with his paws flailing above his head. However, Snoopy and Mark were the only ones in the room freaking out.

When Mark met Taeyong’s eyes, he powered off his newly bequeathed Neo ElectroBaton, but he was still clearly confused.

Taeyong suppressed a laugh at their newest member. Mark had “how to tie a tie” still playing on his Neo Phone in his off hand, but it looked like even then his best efforts resulted in a very sad, lopsided knot mangling up his suit collar.

Haechan didn’t try to hold back his laughter, collapsing on Doyoung’s shoulder and pointing. Johnny however took pity on him and went over to put Mark’s tie out of its misery.

“ _It’s the perimeter alarm for the dorm,_ ” Johnny explained as he finished the tie. “ _Or as we like to call it: the moron alarm._ ”

“ _The moron alarm?_ ”

Taeyong rubbed the middle of his forehead. “ _Because there’s only one group of people who would trespass a laundromat that’s been out of business for over ten years_.”

Taeyong lazily walked over to the video monitor wall and told Snoopy to pull up the dorm’s CCTV. The alarm stopped, allowing a feeling of relief to pass through 127’s empathic bond. The four main monitors blinked to display one giant video.

Sure enough, there they were. All seven of WeishenV were in view of the CCTV that was attached to the roof of the repair shop/laundromat which was the false front for 127’s off-campus dorm.

All of Neo City knew where WeishenV’s dorm was. It was practically a tourist destination. But given that the public wasn’t supposed to know of 127’s existence, their off-campus dorm needed to be hidden. It could be accessed under the laundromat from some of the underground tunnels that SM had snaking beneath Neo City.

127 hardly used the building for its intended purpose though, opting for sleeping in the crash room, but having an actual place of their own did have its uses. It was mostly just where they kept what few personal belongings they owned.

Unfortunately, for security reasons that Taeyong understood in his head but still wasn’t 100% sold on, WeishenV knew all about the fake laundromat, and the thing they loved more than anything else was to mess with the sign out front, knowing full well that 127 was always watching.

127 watched the screens from behind Taeyong as Ten stood on Hendery’s shoulders and proceeded to remove and rearrange the letters on the message board on the bottom half of the laundromat’s sign. It originally said, “Quality service will be back soon” along with the phone number of the long-gone company. But after Ten was finished, the sign now read, “127 sucks.”

Taeyong watched as Yangyang teleported to unlock the laundromat from the inside. Lucas and Winwin entered once it was open, dragging several huge duffle bags that looked stuffed to the brim. 127 didn’t have cameras inside the actual laundromat, but they were able to see the light that suddenly shone out of the front windows. They’d turned off the power to the building a long time ago, but that point was pretty much moot when they had Winwin who with a flick of his wrist could turn on the machines with his electricity powers.

“ _Are they seriously doing their_ laundry?” Mark exclaimed from where he was peeking around Jaehyun’s shoulder.

Taeyong let the groups’ mutual frustrated emotions answer Mark for him.

After WeishenV apparently put all their clothes into their now personal laundromat, they exited. They shut off the lights and closed the door as if that made anything better. The seven of them regrouped, but before they left, they all made sure to take a second to blow kisses and shoot finger hearts toward the CCTV. 127’s empathic bond was practically growling with annoyance.

Finally, WeishenV seemed to remember that they had a dinner to go to, and slowly moved their way down the sidewalk toward the SM Building. 127 thought the stupidity was over, but they were proved wrong when Winwin jogged back into view. He smacked his hand against the sign, and the neon sign above the message board flickered. It was supposed to display the name of the laundromat: “Washers, Dryers, and Vacuums,” but Winwin used his electricity again and burned out all the letters except for four. Now the sign shone brightly in the night to display a new message, “Way V.”

Jaehyun swore colorfully both in his head and aloud. “ _Do they not understand how long that neon takes to fix?!_ ”

“ _Boss?”_ Haechan flashed his eyes at Taeyong trying to look cute and innocent. _“After dinner, do you think we could go to their dorm and…._ ”

“ _No. We’re not going to go prank them back._ ”

More members of 127 than just Haechan whined, but _wow_ could no one whine like Lee Haechan. “ _Ple-ease? It’ll take ten minutes tops if we take the tunnels and—_ ”

“ _Not tonight._ ” Honestly, a part of Taeyong wished he could cave to their youngest member’s pouting. With all that had been going on lately, he knew that a prank would bring up group morale. However, with all that had been going on lately, Taeyong also felt like he needed to keep his boys out of the tunnels unless strictly necessary.

“ _If everyone is ready, let’s head to the tenth floor. I’ll go down to let WeishenV in the building._ ”

Jungwoo of course said that he needed a few more minutes with his hair, but everyone else was pretty much ready, so it wasn’t long before all of 127 were dressed in their very best—weapons concealed by their immaculately pressed suit jackets.

“ _Come on, man!_ ” Haechan whined from where all of them were squished in the elevator.

“ _Just a second! I’m switching Snoopy to Auto-Secure for while we’re at dinner._ ” After Jungwoo finished, he affectionately patted the top of one of the monitors. “Be right back, buddy!” Then he finally piled into the lift.

Taeyong remained in the elevator after the others exited on the tenth floor. Then he continued down to the lobby floor.

Regular business hours for the building were over, so the doors were locked unless you had a pass. Taeyong tried not to pay attention to Hendery and Yangyang while they pressed their faces on the glass in various distorted positions as they waved to Taeyong to let them in. Xiaojun was drawing hearts in the condensation on the window.

Taeyong waved off the two security grunts who were hovering by the doors looking extremely conflicted as to whether they were allowed to let the city’s superheroes in the building without clearance or not. They gave Taeyong a grateful nod, more than willing to hand off the odd situation to their superior and returned to their stations.

When Taeyong opened the door, he was bodily picked up by Lucas in a hug. He felt all the air squeeze out of his lungs, and something inside Lucas’s blazer’s hidden pocket dug into Taeyong’s chest. WeishenV wouldn’t bring weapons would they? They knew better, right? But when Taeyong was finally released, he knew it was his job to ask.

“What’s in your pocket, Lucas?”

“Oh, my bad. I should have offered you some already.” He stuck a hand in the blazer pocket and withdrew the item so fast that it had Taeyong’s hand flying to the Neo Cryogun on his hip. “Here you go!”

In the palm of Lucas’s huge hand was a pack of gum. The bright pink wrapping declared it “Deja Vu” chewing gum, a kind that Taeyong wasn’t familiar with, but at least it wasn’t a knife or something like he feared.

Taeyong waved his hands as his heart rate dropped back to a normal rhythm. “Oh. No thank you. I’m fine. I was just….”

“We don’t have any weapons on us, Taeyong.” Kun’s voice wasn’t angry, but it still made Taeyong feel guilty.

“Unless you count these guns!” Xiaojun declared while flexing. Winwin looked up from his Neo Phone just long enough to bop him on the head.

“I’m sorry, Kun. I know you guys wouldn’t do anything like that, but I—”

“You were just doing your job. I can’t fault you for that.” Kun smiled lightly. “Now where is this dinner? My kids insisted on skipping lunch so they would ‘have enough room.’ But I seriously doubt that would have been a problem. You should see the ridiculous expense reports I have to fill out for these animals.”

Taeyong laughed as he led the group to the elevator. He was glad to see Kun in good spirits after the last time he’d seen him. There was more color to his skin, and he looked steady on his feet. It was a huge relief.

Thankfully the lift was still on the lobby floor so they didn’t have to wait for it. Taeyong distributed the temporary Neo Passes and instructed them on how to scan their fingerprints into them. Kun was the only member of WeishenV who regularly entered the SM building, but this was Lucas’s first time anywhere that wasn’t the lobby, so there were a few more steps in the registration process that the elevator guard had to walk him through since it was his very first time getting entered into the system.

Lucas oohed and awed like someone from outside the Neo Zone over what Taeyong considered to be basic Neo Culture Technology. Guess after working with it for five years, the wow factor faded.

Once they were all successful in registering their fingerprints, WeishenV scanned their passes on the guard’s Neo Pad one by one and entered the lift. The inside of the elevator was one gigantic mirror (save for the floor and ceiling, of course). Taeyong suggested the design because it would make it hard for someone to conceal something or sabotage the elevator when everyone in the elevator could see each other. But despite Taeyong’s solid reasoning, CEO Onew only approved the design because he liked the aesthetic. But Taeyong would take what he could get.

After Taeyong pressed the button for the 10th floor, he couldn’t help but roll his eyes now that he could see the WeishenV members in better lighting. Frankly, Taeyong was impressed that the group were actually wearing suits to the company dinner. He almost radioed to tell Yuta and Taeil to take the seven down to the interrogation room so they could find out where the real WeishenV went, but when Taeyong looked in more detail, most of their slacks were wrinkled beyond reason and Yangyang’s shirt already had an old, orange stain on his chest. That was much more like the WeishenV he knew.

Kun and Ten looked the most put together given that their shirts were tucked in and they were the only ones that had ties—which were tied in ways that Taeyong frankly didn’t know were possible. Still it was clear the others were much more used to wearing their military fatigues than black tie. Lucas had his blazer hanging off his shoulders, but at least he was wearing it, and it looked like Hendery was having to physically hold his hand back from messing up his hair and freeing it from its gelled prison. Still, it was more than Taeyong expected.

Since they didn’t have to go through a checkpoint floor, it didn’t take more than a few seconds to get to the tenth floor. Taeyong held the doors open, allowing the WeishenV members to enter into the hall.

“Wow. I already took some headache medicine preemptively for being with all of 127 in the same room,” Ten rubbed his forehead, “but I forgot that they have that new member.”

“The one you sensed at the parade?” Lucas asked.

“Yeah. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad since I’ve had a little time to build up endurance with Jongin and Anonymous hanging around the house, but apparently not. This guy’s presence is about as subtle as the freaking Neo Tree.” Ten winced. “But speaking of Jongin and Anonymous, I don’t sense them.”

“They’re probably late or something,” Winwin said softly. “If _we_ can’t get out of company dinners, there’s no way anyone in 127 could.”

Ten shrugged then shouted over his shoulder, “Come on, Kun. I want this sucky night over with as fast as possible.”

Taeyong wondered what was taking Kun so long to leave the elevator, but he thought maybe WeishenV’s leader had something he needed to talk with Taeyong privately about. That’s when he noticed that Kun was leaning heavily on the handrail that surrounded the perimeter of the lift.

“Are you okay?” Taeyong asked.

Kun breathed heavily for a moment before sparks flew off his hands, leaping in short arcs to the handrail and into the air. Taeyong flinched, and Kun jumped back, quickly stuffing his hands into his arm pits, but without the support of the rail, he started to wobble. On instinct, Taeyong reached out to steady him, but Kun threw himself into the wall.

“Don’t touch me!”

Taeyong raised his hands and backed off. For a second, he thought Kun’s eyes were red. Something deep in Taeyong’s brain pulsed at that thought, causing him to blink away a sudden stabbing of pain in his skull.

At Kun’s shout, the rest of WeishenV stopped in their tracks and doubled back for their leader, but Lucas grabbed Yangyang and Winwin by the backs of their collars to yank them out of the elevator when they tried to enter.

“I’m sorry. Don’t-don’t touch me. I need to get to the director.” Kun looked pale as he folded himself into the corner of the elevator.

The WeishenV members were tense, and if they were 127, Taeyong knew he would be reeling from the intense emotions they were no doubt feeling. With this strange atmosphere, he found himself taking a step back away from Kun.

“The director?” Taeyong asked slowly.

“Taeyong, the director can help him. You need to take him to him now!” This was the most serious he’d ever heard Ten speak.

Taeyong nodded, bringing his hand up to his Neo Earpiece. “Director, Kun’s.... He needs your help.”

There was only a moment’s pause before Taemin responded. “I’ve already approved a security level increase on his pass. Bring him to the 130th floor.”

Before the director had even finished his instructions, Taeyong was scanning their passes and smashing his finger against the ‘close door’ button.

“Kun!” Hendery was cut off as the doors sealed and started their ascent.

The first checkpoint was the 40th floor which took only a heartbeat to reach. Taeyong had no idea what was going on, but he guessed somewhere in the back of his mind he had always entertained the thought of what he would do if WeishenV with their supernatural abilities suddenly weren’t on their side.

But as literal ice started to crawl up the walls and spiral out from where Kun was huddled in a spasming mess, Taeyong couldn’t help but think how stupid he was to ask if WeishenV had weapons on them earlier. They didn’t need them. It was foolish of Taeyong to think that 127 even with all the NCT they had at their disposal could do anything to stop WeishenV.

The doors opened, and he and Kun stepped across the hall to the next set of elevators. Taeyong held out their passes to the checkpoint guard who looked extremely concerned at Kun, one of the city’s famous superheroes, who was standing in an ever-growing ice patch.

“What’s going on? Does he need help?”

“I’m taking care of him. Let us proceed,” Taeyong said quickly, urging the guard to take the passes.

Of course, it was at that moment that Kun sparked again, causing the guard to jump back. He pushed the passes away and shook his head.

“I can’t let him into the elevator if he’s using his powers. It’s dangerous.”

Taeyong growled and grabbed a hold of the guard’s hand to shove the passes into his grip. “We have approval from the director himself. Let us pass!”

The guard’s eyes glazed over as if they had suddenly gone out of focus. The emotion fell off his face as he calmly scanned the passes and handed them back to Taeyong. With a tap, he silently opened the elevators.

Taeyong was grateful that the guard was finally complying, and he and Kun entered the elevator.

The same pattern continued for the following checkpoints, Kun obviously losing more and more control of his powers as they ascended. Taeyong was feeling lightheaded after they got into the elevator after the last checkpoint. Air was swirling around Kun as if he were gathering it all to himself.

Taeyong wondered if these sorts of ‘malfunctions’ happened to everyone in WeishenV. Or was it just Kun? And which situation was more dangerous?

“We’re through the last checkpoint, sir,” Taeyong reported between gasps for air, his lungs aching for the oxygen that Kun was hoarding with his powers. “ETA 30 seconds.”

When the door opened to the 130th floor lobby, Taeyong saw the director snap at Secretary Taeyeon to leave the room. She hesitated for just a moment probably just to spite the director for treating her like a dog then she left to go to the side lounge.

Kun stumbled out of the lift, shaking like he was a bomb about to explode. The director immediately put his hands on the side of Kun’s head, and Kun breathed a sigh of relief, shoulders sagging but his fists still clenched and trembling.

“Go to the dinner, Taeyong. This doesn’t concern you anymore.”

Taeyong nodded, holding out Kun’s Neo Pass.

“Now, Taeyong!”

From the way the director was glaring at him from over the crown of Kun’s head, Taeyong didn’t need a second invitation, but his hand locked up at the shout. He used his left hand to pry the pass from the stiff fingers on his right hand, and in the frantic struggle, it fell to the ground. He left Kun’s Neo Pass on the carpet outside of the elevator and closed the door as quickly as he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who would win(win) in a prank war between WayV and 127?


	12. Why So Serious?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The red light flickering in the dark. Welcome to the party. Dyes the shadow of grey city. Welcome to my nightmare.” -Mad Dog by NCT127

The conference room was done up as grand as a dinner venue in the Black Pearl district. Not that Taeyong had been to one personally, but he could look down on a few of the lavish rooftop banquets from the 127th floor of the SM Building, and they looked dizzyingly fancy from afar.

It was endearing in a way that CEO Onew would go to such lengths for them. 127 and WeishenV weren’t clients that he needed to impress, but they were still given the full royal treatment. The expensive tableware was recently polished, and the chairs were definitely imported from El Dorado or somewhere else outside the Neo Zone.

After getting off the elevator and pushing through the conference room doors, Taeyong had naturally drawn the attention of everyone who was already seated—WeishenV on the left and 127 on the right with the CEO sitting at the head of the long table. Taeyong was immediately bombarded both telepathically from 127 and vocally by WeishenV about Kun.

“Kun is with the director. He should be fine now.” He saw Hendery’s concerned eyes and found himself adding, “I’ll let you know when the director says he’s ready to return.”

WeishenV frowned, but their attention quickly drifted back to their food.

When Taeyong returned to his seat, he addressed 127 briefly. “ _Once again. No telepathy in front of the CEO. Vocal conversations only._ ”

“ _You’re using telepathy now,_ ” Johnny said, just to be petulant.

Taeyong didn’t honor the comment with a reply.

“Well, I do hope Kun feels better soon,” said CEO Onew.

The CEO was almost the director’s complete opposite. Where Director Taemin was harsh and sharp, CEO Onew was soft and almost too honest. There was a little voice in Taeyong’s head that told him the two were eerily similar to Yuta and Taeil and why they made such an effective duo while interrogating.

Any intruder in the SM Building that Johnny or Haechan apprehended was taken to a small room where Yuta and Taeil would grill the person for answers about what they were doing and why they were in the building. Yuta wouldn’t yell or physically do anything to them, but his gaze alone was terrifying enough to loose secrets from anyone’s lips. Then when they saw Taeil, heard his soft and comforting voice, they’d be pushed the last bit over the edge into confessing everything. Together, with their good cop/bad cop routine, Yuta and Taeil had managed to make every person they’d interrogated divulge any and all information they had. A spotless record they’d kept to this day.

As Taeyong looked into the CEO’s eyes, for the first time he wondered if it was just as fake as Taeil’s good cop persona. Was it an act made to make WeishenV and 127 lower their guards? A couple days ago, Taeyong wouldn’t have even entertained such an outrageous thought against his bosses, but when he looked down the table and saw Johnny and Mark, he thought of the basement and tucked the thought away to ponder later.

“But until Kun returns, let’s not let the food get cold.” The CEO smiled kindly, and he himself placed a drumstick on Lucas’s plate. “Please, everyone, eat as much as you like!”

Lucas gave a thumbs up and nodded while giving the CEO a huge grin.

The chicken was catered of course from the CEO’s favorite restaurant. In Taeyong’s humble opinion, no matter how many carats were in the bowls and plates it was displayed in, it still just looked like a pile of chicken.

Jungwoo snapped his fingers, and one of the staff members standing against the wall suddenly came to life. They quickly took the plate of bones that Jungwoo had already created and replaced it with a fresh dish.

Taeyong was just about halfway through his first drumstick when he sensed Doyoung’s gaze in his peripheral. He was also nudging at the empathic bond, trying to get his attention.

“What’s up?”

Doyoung didn’t look up from his food, and if Taeyong hadn’t seen his mouth move, he might not have even heard him speaking. “Mark had an episode while you were helping Kun.”

Taeyong’s eyes darted to the CEO who was in passionate conversation with the WeishenV side of the table and wasn’t paying any attention to himself or Doyoung. He breathed a sigh of relief. Of course he could trust Doyoung to be discrete. Mark’s condition was currently an internal affair, and they all unspokenly agreed it was best kept that way. Taeyong desperately wished he could use telepathy, but he held himself back.

“He’s okay. Johnny’s got an eye on him.” Doyoung said softly. “He calmed down quickly. I don’t think WeishenV or the CEO noticed. But I thought you should know.”

Taeyong nodded, grateful for the information. He really didn’t know what to do with Mark, but he found himself relieved that the kid wasn’t near Director Taemin when it happened. He leaned back casually and caught a glimpse of their newest member at the other end of the long table. Mark was picking at his food, but he didn’t look pale or anything at least.

Taeyong tried to stifle his growing anxiety so it wouldn’t transfer to the others. This was supposed to be a fun evening, and his boys deserved it. He couldn’t ruin it by worrying about something he couldn’t fix right this second. He forced himself to grab his fork and continue eating but almost dropped it again when the CEO addressed Mark directly.

“Yoo hoo! Hello down there!” he called.

The entire room turned to look at the opposite end of the table where Mark sat holding up an awkward finger pointing to himself in question.

“You must be Mark. I’ve been looking forward to finally meeting you after all I’ve heard about you from Taemin.”

Mark shrank under the weight of everyone’s gazes, his stress level elevating in the empathic bond. 127 members were experts at blending in, at not being noticed unless they wanted to be. But with their growing concern for Mark and his panic attacks that were becoming more and more frequent, their limits were being tested.

CEO Onew patted his hand at the empty seat to his right. “Why don’t you come sit over here by me. I’m sure Kun won’t mind you borrowing his chair for a bit.”

Taeyong wasn’t sure if he felt more relieved that Mark would be closer to him and therefore easier to influence empathically or more nervous that any mishaps that could happen would be front and center right next to the CEO.

For what it was worth, despite Mark’s obvious discomfort felt by 127, to WeishenV and the CEO who had no empathic abilities, Mark presented himself professionally as he remembered to rebutton his suit jacket when he stood just like Taeyong had told him to do before he walked over to the head of the table. Taeyong reminded himself to have faith in Mark. He wouldn’t have graduated into the 127 program if he wasn’t ready. No matter how new, he was just as much of a member of 127 as the rest of them, ready to bluff his way through any situation and keep his personal details a secret.

“Hi, I’m Lucas.” As Mark’s new seat neighbor, Lucas held out a hand in greeting.

On Lucas’s other side, Ten stood, rubbing his temples in a way that was surely going to bruise. “And I’m outta here.” He could barely even look at Mark as he backed away. “Sorry. I’m sure you’re an awesome person. I just can’t sit near you.” He practically ran the rest of the length of the table and slumped into an empty chair at the opposite end.

Once the rearranging was done, the CEO spoke up again. “There that’s better. How am I supposed to get to know you if you’re way down there? You 127 boys are so good at sneaking around I hardly ever see you!”

“Sorry, sir. We don’t mean to hide…”

“Oh no, no! You’re just doing your jobs well—I appreciate that. And Taemin keeps you so busy.” He smiled and picked up his cup of tea, which Taeyong noticed was the only thing on his table setting the CEO had touched the whole dinner. Looking at 127 over the rim of the cup, he asked like it was some simple workplace gossip, “So what’s the word on those fugitives he has you hunting?”

“We’re looking into it, sir,” Taeyong answered quickly. “Jungwoo and Jaehyun have been searching every CCTV in the Neo Zone.”

“I have no doubt. Neo Tree Park just looks so sad with no one visiting. Once you take care of the fugitive situation, will that mean tourism at the Neo Tree can finally resume?”

“The two fugitives are unrelated to the threat on the Neo Tree. That was done by JYP’s splinter faction: GOT7,” Doyoung reported.

“That’s _our_ division.” Hendery waved a hand toward the rest of his side of the table proudly. “We’ve been looking forward to getting to meet those terrorists for a while. Don’t worry, sir. WeishenV is on the job.”

The CEO looked sincerely between both sides of the table then bubbled up a response. “I’m just so proud of you boys. You all do such a great job.”

WeishenV obviously preened at the complement, and 127 kept their cools on the outside, but Taeyong could feel through the bond that they were humming with happy energy. Yet some sort of cold chill kept Taeyong from feeling the same. If he could only just use telepathy to check up on Mark real quick...he pushed the thought from his mind. Opening 127’s telepathy floodgates before this dinner was over would be a mistake.

The dinner continued, but as everyone started to get full, the tension started to build between the groups.

The atmosphere of the dinner in general was already awkward with Mark filling Kun’s glaringly empty seat opposite Taeyong. Without their leader’s presence, WeishenV seemed to be squirmy with energy like students when the teacher’s left the room. And from the state of 127’s empathic energies, 127 were reaching their social limits.

He clamped down on the broiling mental bonds and pulsed some calming energy through it though it was accepted begrudgingly like an angry cat receiving pets. Jungwoo seemed to be doing the best but it was because he was on his Neo Phone watching videos of some online streamers playing Power.

Yangyang noticed, eyes flashing with excitement. “You like our game too?”

“ _Your_ game?” Jungwoo raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah. The game’s based off of us in WeishenV, didn’t you know? Superpowers and all that. We should play sometime!”

Jungwoo hummed. “I was pretty sure it was based off the Tree of Life mythology.”

“What? No!” Yangyang looked completely offended.

“It’s obvious. There are twelve villains, each with a single elemental power that they use to corrupt the Tree of Life’s heart. How is that even remotely closer to seven heroes with a mix of powers?”

Taeyong almost snorted the mineral water out his nose. Jungwoo might not have looked it, but he had a mischievous streak in him. He just wasn’t as obvious about it as Haechan. But from the look in his eyes, he was bored and clearly having a really fun time with Yangyang here.

Yangyang sputtered, rising from his seat like a hover jet, but Hendery in the seat over shoved a chicken wing in his gaping mouth and effectively ended the argument. Jungwoo smirked, happy he won the fight, and returned to watching the streamer.

Doyoung sitting just to Taeyong’s left was particularly stressed though it wasn’t really a surprise with his tightly wound personality. He was trying his best to listen to CEO Onew drone on about something and attempting to nod and fake laugh in all the right places, but Lucas was loudly chewing with his mouth open and apparently it was the equivalent of committing a heinous offense. Doyoung was on the edge of hysterics, and it was only escalated when Lucas noticed and started chewing louder.

Taeyong fake laughed at the CEO and put a casual hand on Doyoung’s shoulder, dumping a tsunami of calming energy on the other. Doyoung shot Taeyong a wide-eyed look above a strained smile, but eventually he took a deep breath and reined himself in.

Some of the others in 127 weren’t being as self-disciplined though. Yuta was honestly just looking at Xiaojun, but his resting angry face alone had made those he’d been interrogating pee themselves. Yuta was taking obvious sadistic pleasure in the way the WeishenV member was dodging the fierce eye contact, tugging at his collar every few seconds and looking like he’d rather be beaten with a Neo Electrobaton.

Further down at the far end of the table, Johnny was thankfully keeping Haechan in line. Without looking, he grabbed the younger by his collar and yanked his butt back in the seat after Yangyang landed yet _another_ chicken bone into Haechan’s drink. Hendery and Yangyang snickered. They seemed to be just about the only people here besides CEO Onew having any fun.

“So are your other members coming or not?” Ten asked, almost annoyed.

“What?” Taeyong was caught off guard.

“Come on. You don’t have to play dumb.” Ten rubbed the side of his head like it was paining him. “They stayed over at our dorm last night. We already know all about them.”

Yuta’s eyebrows furrowed. “What are you talking about? We’re all here.”

“Yangyang, my ears must be failing me. Did I not just say for them not to play dumb?”

“We’re not playing dumb!” Doyoung insisted.

“So you’re not _playing_ dumb. You just _are_ dumb?” Hendery smirked over his glass.

Doyoung got red in the face as Yangyang and Xiaojun oohed at the sick burn.

The empathic bond rumbled, and the whole of 127 looked to Taeyong for permission to shred WeishenV telepathically. A permission that was not granted.

Taeyong couldn’t help but get a little concerned. Yes, there were obviously no members of 127 outside of the nine of them present at the table, but did that mean that there were people going around saying that they were members of 127? A group that no one should have even known existed? And they had been staying at WeishenV’s dorm with them? Surely not. That was ridiculous. He knew WeishenV liked to joke, but maybe this one was taking it too far.

“ _Taeil, please. Stop._ ”

127 froze in a stalemate, all thinking the same thing. The telepathic silence had been broken. Yet no one was brave enough to speak the next words, but also no one was willing to ignore that someone else had disobeyed the guideline first. Jaehyun had drawn everyone’s attention as no one picked him to be the one to violate Taeyong’s no telepathy rule.

Taeil frowned, genuinely confused as Jaehyun’s comment had startled him out of another attempt to coax Winwin into conversation. So far the other had offered only yes and no answers, clearly trying to signal that he didn’t wish to participate in the only cross-table conversation that was happening, but Taeil was not picking that up.

“ _I’m just being polite_.” Taeil frowned, a rare flare of anger echoing his stiffening posture.

The empathic bond blazed at the second violation with multiple spikes of frustration attacking Taeyong in his seat each wondering the same thing: If some of them got to say something telepathically, why not the rest? Taeyong felt all control slip away as the group simultaneously came to the conclusion that compared to whatever punishment was in store for them, speaking telepathically anyway just might be worth it.

 _“It’s uncomfortable to watch. Just leave him alone.”_ Jaehyun explained sharply.

 _“Winwin can take care of himself. Just because you’re uncomfortable doesn’t mean Winwin is,”_ Yuta jumped to Taeil’s defense.

Jaehyun sputtered. _“Have you looked at him? I would have thought our prized interrogators would be better at interpreting body language than this.”_

 _“Silence in the headspace please. I can’t hear my video.”_ Jungwoo said as more of a threat than a request.

For a moment, Jungwoo got his silence. That is, until Ten spoke up again. “Whatever. I don’t really care if they show up or not. The less of you guys in one place, the better. I’m taking their chairs though.” He disappeared under the table, laying across the two empty chairs at the end of the WeishenV side due to the uneven number of members in the two groups.

 _“What are they talking about?!”_ The red in Doyoung’s face had still yet to drain from WeishenV’s previous taunt.

“ _Guys, they’re just messing with us. They’re not serious_ ,” Johnny said in his best attempt at mediating.

“ _I’m pretty sure they’re serious about the part where they’re insulting us_.” Haechan seethed.

_“Guys. Shut up. The Zitao level is sacred, and I’m missing important details.”_

_“Dumb?_ Dumb!? _Do they even know what dumb is? Dumb is dragging your laundry through half the city to a laundromat when you already have a washer and dryer in your house.”_

“Winwin, I heard you like dogs. Have you owned one before?”

 _“Taeil,_ please! _”_

_“You don’t know what Winwin likes and doesn’t like, Jaehyun. At least Taeil’s asking him and not deciding for him.”_

_“It’s the Power Orb of Time! Kind of important here! I need to know these cheats!”_

_“I’m going to put red socks in all of the washers next time I’m at the dorm. Who’s with me?”_

_“But WeishenV wears mostly dark clothes.”_

_“Then bleach!”_

_“This is a live video. Do you people know what live means? It means I can’t rewind it.”_

Taeyong’s mind was blanking. Being a leader wasn’t too hard when he was holding the reins, but wrangling a herd of loose stallions racing wild and free was much easier said than done. And it didn’t help that his stallions weren’t the only ones who had escaped their pen.

“Get your _feet_ off of me!” Yangyang screamed. He shoved something off his lap, and a loud thunk filled the room when Ten’s shoes hit the floor.

“I’m in so much pain right now,” Ten moaned from under the table.

“You and your pain already have two chairs. Stay off of mine.”

“Hey, Xiaojun. Come help me with this tower.” Lucas pointed to the foundation of the next feat in chicken bone architecture sitting on the plate in front of him.

“I’m more of a cat person myself, but anything without antennae is good...well, butterflies are also alright. Did you know butterflies taste things with their feet?”

Winwin tensed when he found the pitcher of water he had been guzzling to avoid conversation was empty. Taeyong witnessed the exact moment when Winwin realized he was going to have to formulate a response to Taeil’s incessant questioning.

Taeyong was just about to scream at both his boys and Kun’s when the unthinkable happened. The king stallion, the CEO himself, reached across Mark’s place and stacked one of Lucas’s chicken bones on top of the tower, thus contributing to the chaos. Taeyong fought to keep his jaw from dropping. How was CEO Onew so unbothered by all this? Sure, he couldn’t hear 127’s telepathic arguing, but the whole table was giving off an aura that could not be missed.

Taeyong couldn’t scold them now, not with the CEO promoting this behavior. He sighed and looked at Mark who was sitting across from him, unsure of which part of the mess to focus on. At least Mark’s anxiety had gone down significantly. Though he still looked exhausted, which wasn’t really anything new.

Taeyong couldn’t believe he was going to do it, but at this point what the heck. Nobody else was following his rule, and he needed to talk to Mark.

_“Are you feeling okay? I heard you weren’t feeling well earlier.”_

Mark startled, looking around the room for where Taeyong’s voice was actually coming from before he remembered they were sitting across from each other. _“Yeah, I’m fine. It was weird. It was like I felt...well,_ everything _all at the same time, and I have no idea where it all came from. But whatever it was, it went away. I’m fine now.”_

_“If you start to feel strange again, tell me. I’ll try to help you.”_

_“Thanks, man. Johnny said it took him a while to get used to the whole empath thing right after his enhancement procedure. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it soon.”_

Taeyong smiled encouragingly. He knew Johnny meant well even if it was a lie. None of the rest of 127 had struggled like Mark was. Empathy and telepathy just came naturally to them.

“Oh so you’ve never had a puppy of your own. You should get one.”

Winwin gripped his glass like a lifeline and tried to drink the ice at the bottom for the third time. Luckily Xiaojun answered for him. “I want one! If I had one, I’d name it Bella.”

“Belly?!” Lucas practically shouted.

Ten peeked his head up and weighed in on the topic that was important enough to briefly numb his pain. “If we’re getting anything, it’s going to be a cat.”

“I agree with Ten,” Hendery seconded, then suddenly looked horrified at himself with the words he had just said.

“Taeyong.”

Taeyong jolted at the sound of his own name. Then he jumped to his feet and plugged his open ear when he realized it was the director’s voice coming through his Neo Earpiece.

“Sir?”

The director’s voice was stern and short. “That was the second time I called you. What’s going on down there? Is everyone okay?”

“Yes, everything is fine. I didn’t hear you the first time, sir. I’m sorry. It was my fault.”

“Kun is stable, but he needs to rest. Bring WeishenV down to the lobby. We’ll meet you there.”

“Right away, sir.”

Taeyong closed the channel with the director and removed his hand from his ear. It took him a moment to realize the entire room was silent, both out loud and in his head, and everyone—even the CEO—was staring at him. No one dared even breathe as they waited to hear what the director had said.

“Dinner’s over. Kun needs to go home.”

Taeyong wasn’t sure he even blinked before all of WeishenV were out the door and trying to remember how to scan themselves into the elevator. Taeyong bowed politely to the CEO, and he left the rest of 127 to finish up the formalities so he could go catch up to WeishenV before they left him out of the elevator.

Kun was standing next to the Director looking a little dazed but not like he was going to keel over—not nearly as miserable-looking as he had when he’d last seen Kun leave the SM Building.

WeishenV immediately swarmed their leader. Lucas tried to convince Kun that he should carry him the way back to their dorm just in case, but Kun refused, opting instead to simply lean on Lucas instead. Without much more than a nod in their direction, the group exited the building.

Taeyong watched as WeishenV helped Kun down the sidewalk when the Director spoke. “Did Mark enjoy his first company dinner?”

Taeyong was taken aback. The director was always business. He didn’t think he’d ever heard anything that sounded like concern for their personal wellbeings come out of his mouth before.

“He’s doing fine, sir.” He dared not to mention that Mark had another panic attack.

Director Taemin looked long and hard at Taeyong, and for a second, Taeyong raised up his mental shields even though the director couldn’t read his mind. Then the director muttered a dismissal and returned to the elevator.

Taeyong stayed a minute longer to watch WeishenV. He needed to talk to Kun. He had to know what happened in the elevator. When they disappeared around the block, he brought a hand up to his earpiece.

“Haechan, I’ve changed my mind.”

“We’re going to prank them?!”

“Yeah. Tell Yuta and Taeil to get the interrogation room ready. We’re also going to see if there’s any truth to these 127 imposters.”

“With pleasure, boss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please enjoy this list of 127's job descriptions :)
> 
> 127 responsibility: Day shift, Night shift  
> Top floor private security: Taeyong, Doyoung  
> General security: Johnny, Haechan  
> Monitor duty: Jaehyun, Jungwoo  
> Interrogation: Yuta, Taeil  
> Gopher: Mark


	13. Moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “An Eye-of-Red Force created the evil which coveted the heart of Tree of Life.” -Narrator in EXO’s “MAMA” music video

WeishenV had foolishly left their house unsupervised. That was hours ago. Yet after a whole afternoon of digging through closets and leafing through dusty books, Baekhyun and Kai’s thorough search for clues—anything that would point them towards the Legends’ whereabouts—still came up empty-handed.

Baekhyun rummaged through the drawer of a nightstand, hoping his second pass would yield something more successful than the first: a pair of glasses, a fraying phone charging cord, and WeishenV’s own merch. At least this one wasn’t full of gum wrappers folded into origami cranes like the last drawer.

Aside from a few eccentricities, the place was normal, but Baekhyun refused to admit he and Kai were back to square one. There had to be _something_ in this house.

Kai’s footsteps clunking down the stairs sounded like defeat, but Baekhyun looked up at him desperately anyway when he reached the doorway, hoping Kai’s report on his findings would be more successful than his own. _“Anything?”_

_“I did find something disgusting under one of the beds, but significant…? No luck.”_ Kai shuddered at the mere memory of whatever it was he saw up there.

Baekhyun grimaced at the shared emotion, but continued his search, bravely opening a dresser drawer stuffed so full even a Legend’s power might not be enough to get it closed again. He had seen with his own eyes WeishenV carrying bags of laundry with them when they left home earlier that afternoon. How a person could possibly own this many socks, especially when some of them surely were in the laundry and not accounted for here, was beyond Baekhyun and his very limited wardrobe.

_“Welp,”_ Kai pushed off the doorframe and clapped his hands together. _“I’m going to go check the kitchen again. We might have missed something.”_

Baekhyun nodded, knowing it was futile to keep Kai from his hourly snacking schedule. When the sock drawer yielded nothing more than the expected socks, a comic book (Dream Plan Issue 7), and some money, he pressed everything down and rammed it with his shoulder a few times to close it.

Kai made a face from the doorway. _“Maybe you should take a break and come with me. We_ have _been at it for a while.”_

In Baekhyun’s momentary hesitation to move to the next overstuffed drawer, Kai took the opportunity to slide his arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders and guide him to the kitchen table. _“I’ll fix us something to eat that I know you won’t be able to resist.”_

Baekhyun doubted that.

After pushing Baekhyun’s chair in tight enough to the table until he was confident Baekhyun wouldn’t exert the energy to slip away, Kai opened the fridge and grabbed a carton of milk. But just before the door swung closed, he did a double take and flung it back open again until it started beeping, complaining about the extended loss of cold air. _“Okay, I’m not crazy, but that wasn’t there when I ate leftover pizza an hour ago.”_

Baekhyun lazily looked to where Kai was pointing at a stack of flat boxes sitting eye-level in the fridge. _“What is it?”_

Kai grabbed the top box and squinted at the label. Suddenly, he jumped and tossed the box onto the table. _“Gross. I was hoping I wouldn’t see any more of that.”_

Baekhyun drew the box toward himself and read the yellow bubble letters: “Deja Vu Chewing Gum.” He slid the box back toward Kai, who looked at it in disgust. Baekhyun snorted, _“What? Did you find wrappers too?”_

_“I wish.”_

Baekhyun didn’t press further for details he didn’t want to hear. _“You probably just missed seeing it before. It couldn’t have shown up out of nowhere.”_

Kai dramatically placed his hand on his chest and sounded a bit offended. _“No, I didn’t ‘just miss it.’ Do you have any idea how many times I’ve been in that fridge today? I can say with complete confidence that there are 3 oranges on the top shelf with 1 rogue orange rolling around in the vegetable drawer and that the bottle of ketchup is expired but still edible. I definitely would have known these were in there.”_

Kai’s defense was valid. If there was anything Baekhyun could trust him on, it was his ability to take inventory of any food within eating distance. Although he wasn’t sure this really counted as food. He flicked open the package and pulled out one of the pieces.

_“Don’t eat it!”_ Kai snatched the gum from Baekhyun’s hands before he could even unwrap it.

Even with being an empathic being, the range of emotions Baekhyun felt on a daily basis was relatively subdued. It was simple that way. And he liked it. By contrast, the amount of feelings Kai had about _literally everything_ was nothing short of impressive. The past few years of just the two of them had been eye-opening to say the least. It wasn’t that Kai felt emotions that Baekhyun had never experienced before, but more so that he felt them to their fullest extent and in rapid succession. Kai’s emotional endurance was off the charts. Baekhyun simply didn’t have the energy to feel so many things at once. While he was comfortable in his own rhythm of feelings, keeping up Kai’s emotions as they pinballed around in his brain was exhausting.

Kai held the gum limply and traced the toe of his foot on the grooves of the kitchen tile, suddenly shy after his outburst. _“I mean, we don’t know what’s in this.”_ He dropped his mental voice so it was just barely a whisper. _“It could be drugs.”_

Before Baekhyun had the chance to debunk yet another extravagant theory of Kai’s, the metal front gate to the house clanged, and the group of loud voices they had come to know over the past couple days made for a not so stealthy entrance onto the property.

At first, Kai froze in shock. Then the beeping of the door code being punched in snapped him back into action. He threw the pack of gum back in the fridge and slammed the door shut. Being discreet was not one of Kai’s strong points. His rigid posture and awkward arm placement was anything but casual. It was a miracle they had slipped under the radar thus far. Luckily, WeishenV didn’t seem to be terribly observant, so it was likely, even with Kai’s poor lying skills, they would pass undetected yet again.

The door banged open against the wall, and Baekhyun heard the classic shoe-removal scuffle which he was grateful not to be a part of. Yangyang was the first to emerge. He pointed at Kai and Baekhyun as if he were tattling on them and said, “Ooooo...Taeyong is going to kill you for skipping.

Baekhyun shrugged, pretending he knew what Yangyang was talking about. He had gathered enough details from WeishenV’s unfiltered conversations leading up to the event and was able to piece together that they had just attended some sort of formal dinner with their friends…? Enemies…? Coworkers…? The group they referred to as “127.” For some reason, they still whole-heartedly believed Baekhyun and Kai to be a part of this 127 with little to no evidence, and it seemed that even now, after they’d missed the group’s dinner, Yangyang was more concerned about their punishment for playing hooky than he was about considering that he may have reason to doubt the loyalties of his newest friends.

“I really could have used your back-up. Jungwoo was spouting nonsense about Power. As if he actually knows!” He pulled out the chair next to Baekhyun to sulk, but he had barely touched the seat before the sound of Lucas’s voice made him jump back up again.

“Don’t you dare sit down, Yangyang. Get you butt over here and help me!” Lucas called from where he was dragging the hopefully now clean duffle bags of laundry into the living room.

“I put the clothes in the machines, didn’t I? It was never specified that I also had to put them away.”

Kun entered the kitchen, rubbing his forehead as he poured himself a glass of water. “Could you just finish the job, Yangyang?” he said with a sigh of exasperation attached to the end.

As far as Baekhyun could tell, Kun’s condition had improved significantly since his first meeting with him the other morning. After their initial introduction and once Kun had gotten a little rest, he was very hospitable and engaged with everyone in the house. Though his condition looked to have taken another dive while he was out. Baekhyun didn’t blame him. He could only imagine how exhausting it would be to endure a whole dinner with WeishenV and the notorious 127 as dinner guests.

Yangyang let out a practiced groan and dragged himself over to one of the bags. He began helping Lucas unload, keeping his back turned to Hendery who was providing unhelpful side commentary and encouragement.

Behind the commotion, Winwin snuck upstairs and Xiaojun slipped into the kitchen. He slid a stack of styrofoam take-out boxes on the counter next to Kun. “I’ll leave these with you. You should get some of the leftovers before they disappear into the void.”

Kun chuckled and opened one of the boxes.

“How are you feeling? Still okay?” Xiaojun lingered in the kitchen, watching Kun with concern. 

Kun plated the leftover food and stuck it in the microwave. “Like I said before, the director helps me. Taeyong got me upstairs right away, so it wasn’t so bad this time. I’m just glad it didn’t happen in front of the CEO.”

“ _I’m_ just glad you’re feeling better again. I don’t like it when your powers flare up. It makes me nervous...and worried about you.”

“You and me both.” Kun leaned on the counter and checked the slowly ticking microwave countdown which seemed to be moving too slow. He then sighed and added, “Try not to dwell on it too much. You guys reacted well today. Trust me. That’s the best you can do for me. I know you guys have my back even if the situation is...well, what it is.”

Xiaojun looked unconvinced and fully prepared to dwell on the issue longer. But he seemed to pick up on Kun’s lack of interest in further discussion and tabled the topic surely for later. Instead he addressed Ten, who had just dropped into the chair Yangyang had left open. “I thought you said you were going to go sleep off your headache.”

“I was, but I changed my mind.” Ten let out a deep breath and motioned to Baekhyun and Kai. “Their two presences are much more manageable compared to all of 127 at the same time. But seriously though. Where were you guys?”

Baekhyun had known this question would come, so he had already come up with an answer, though he wasn’t sure how well it was going to float. “I wasn’t hungry. I thought it would be rude to go and not eat.”

“And Taeyong allowed that? I would have thought with how uptight he is…”

“Ten,” Kun warned.

Ten held his hands up in surrender. “I’m not judging. Just making an observation.”

_“Do you think they’re onto us?”_ Kai asked. He leaned his face in his hands, doing his best to distort his obviously guilty smile.

Baekhyun sent as many relaxing vibes as he could muster in Kai’s direction, but the ratio was not near enough to offset the mishmash of emotions that was starting to overwhelm both of them. _“I know telling you to relax isn’t going to work, but…”_

Baekhyun stopped and silenced his mind. He could have sworn he had just heard a voice that wasn’t his or Kai’s in there, but that couldn’t be. That was impossible. Kai’s paranoia must be getting to him. He hated closing Kai out, but he had to hold onto his sanity. However, even with Kai muted, he heard the voice mumble something again. And from the looks of it, Kai had heard it too.

_“Why couldn’t we take the tunnels, again?”_ The voice was faint but growing in volume and clarity with every word.

A different voice responded, _“There isn’t a tunnel leading directly to their house. It’s faster to walk there straight from the SM building rather than backtracking through the tunnels.”_

_“Never stopped us before.”_

Kai couldn’t hide his wide-eyed shock, but before anyone noticed his strange expression, Ten dropped his head on the table and groaned, “Why can’t they just let it be a night?” He tugged at his hair and looked at Baekhyun from the corner of his eye. “Can you guys tell them to go away? I can’t stand this anymore.”

As if summoned by Ten’s pain, Yangyang teleported into the kitchen and slammed his hands on the table. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? 127 approaches?”

Ten buried his head in his arms and squeezed. “Yes, and they brought _Mark_. Anyone but that migraine.”

“You heard the man, people! Battle stations!” Yangyang ran to the stairwell, yelling urgent commands up to Winwin, and Lucas and Hendery dropped what they were doing to open a closet and drag out a trebuchet Baekhyun had been hoping he would never have to see in use.

On instinct, Xiaojun went to help with preparations but doubled back to check on Kun who was gripping the countertop and squeezing his eyes shut.

“Kun, are you okay?” he whispered.

No sooner had the words been spoken when Baekhyun felt it. The shrinkwrap plastic feeling of time constricting around him, locking him in place. As a Legend, he had enough underlying control over time to not be fully affected by this pause. He watched as the room around him froze in place—all except for Kun and his glowing red eyes.

Kun casually set his plate of food down and walked passed Xiaojun and the rest of them at the kitchen table as if the halted world around him was no unusual occurrence.

After a few seconds, the seal of time was broken, and the plastic bag in which they had been stored reinflated, giving them space to move again.

Xiaojun did a double take from where Kun had been standing before to where he suddenly was standing now. To the WeishenV member, it looked like Kun had just glitched from one side of the room to the other. “Guys! Kun!”

The others barely had a chance to look where Xiaojun was pointing before time froze them again, and Kun continued his walk to the front door. When he released them, Kun was already passed the trebuchet, a noticeable distance to have time jumped.

“Somebody call the…!”

The next time freeze was longer as Kun stood in the entryway and slipped on his shoes and jacket, the WeishenV members’ faces captured in a panicked portrait they had no power to break free from.

“...director!”

The pulse of time pausing and playing was starting to make Baekhyun sick, but the slight lightheadedness was nothing compared to the yank of his stomach when the light frequencies in the room started changing. Kun pulled on the wavelengths like a puppeteer and wove them around himself until he vanished from view of the others.

The light around Baekhyun pinched and pulled in a way it had never done before, and he felt a part of his power being drawn from him and used without his command. Though Kun was invisible to the others, Baekhyun was not about to be overpowered with his own element. He stretched an opening in the light so that at least he could see Kun slip out the front door.

Xiaojun ran after him, flinging the door open and leaving it hanging ajar as he ran out to the yard.

WeishenV needed less than a second to process before the rest of them dashed out to follow. Even Kai was up and running, but Baekhyun grabbed his arm and tugged him back. Almost as if to prove to himself the superior strength of a Legend’s power compared to Kun’s, he pulled Kai close and bent the light around them until they disappeared. Baekhyun was not used to someone else touching his light. He found himself feeling overprotective if not jealous of another person manipulating the element that was supposed to belong only to him. Under the mask of invisibility, the two of them moved to the doorway.

“Did anyone see where he went?” Xiaojun paced the yard, looking in spaces impossible for Kun to hide in.

“He can’t have gone far. Let’s move before someone else finds him first.” Lucas unlatched the gate and started to run out into the city. He just barely stopped himself from running into the group of people staring at them through the dark on the other side.

The man in front was dressed in all black with an obvious weapon holstered at his hip. “Find who?”

“Taeyong!” Yangyang grabbed the first and pulled him onto the property with the others sliding in behind. “Guys, we need your help! Kun—”

Baekhyun almost lost his grip on the light beams folded around him and Kai when Kun released his own, snapping the wavelengths back into place like elastic.

Kun lunged forward, using a blast of wind to knock almost everyone back in different directions. He moved so fast Baekhyun almost lost track of him for a second, but the sound of a struggle drew his attention to two figures wrestling in the dirt.

“Get him off of him!” someone shouted. But when the others ran forward a wall of fire shot up from the ground, holding them back.

Xiaojun tried his best, but his quickly evaporating steam did nothing to douse the flames.

Baekhyun felt the heat on his face as the ring of fire encircling Kun and his captive grew taller. While the others struggled with the tangled garden hose, Ten ran back in the house and returned with a fire extinguisher carried under his arm like a football. “Out of the way! Move! Move!” he screamed.

As soon as he started spraying a section of the flames away, someone jumped through the path created and pulled Kun’s hostage out of the slowly shrinking ring of fire. Kun was left laying in the burnt area of grass, unmoving.

Ten threw the extinguisher aside and ran over to check on him. “Kun? Kun!” Shaking him turned up fruitless. Then Ten’s eyes landed on a metal baton lying next to Kun’s unconscious body. He picked it up and hit a button so electricity sparked and lit up the end. Aiming the weapon at Kun’s victim, he asked in a low voice, “Did you use this on him?”

The other whose face was bloodied and hair askew waved his hands in front of him rapidly, “I wouldn’t… I couldn’t…”

The one Yangyang had referred to as Taeyong stepped between the two. “Mark did what he had to do. Kun will be okay when he wakes up.”

Ten gripped the baton tighter, rage visibly shaking through his arm.

“We have to move fast, Ten.” Taeyong tried again. “People probably already have seen the smoke and are going to come looking. Put it down so we can get him help.”

Ten looked at the cloudy air and grunted then dropped the baton on the grass and kicked it away.

Once the weapon was out of play, Lucas ran over and picked Kun up like a ragdoll. Hendery supported his other side and pulled Kun’s hood over his face. “This looks natural, right?” he said as Kun’s head lulled to one side.

“Doesn’t matter. Let’s hurry.”

Everyone filed out the gate with Mark and Taeyong bringing up the rear. The frazzled emotions spiralling out of Mark was something only Kai could translate.

Taeyong tried to calm him. _“It’s okay, Mark. That Neo Electro Baton was your only defense.”_

_“I know.”_ Even Mark’s telepathic voice was shaking. _“But I really didn’t use it. Kun took it from me and stunned himself.”_

The gate quietly latched shut behind the two of them, leaving Baekhyun and Kai alone on the front porch. Baekhyun waited a few seconds before he deemed the coast to be clear and allowed the light to flow around them naturally again. Once they both could see each other, they recognized the exact same astonished expression on the other’s face.

_“They have telepathy,”_ Baekhyun stated the obvious.

_“And empathy,”_ Kai added.

While this discovery of humans somehow using some of the Legends’ powers shouldn’t have been that different than what they’d already seen from WeishenV, this one felt more invasive. Baekhyun, of course, felt uncomfortable but not quite, it seemed, as rattled as Kai.

Kai was visibly shaken by these other people trespassing through their mental space and almost looked pale under the moonlight. He stumbled out onto the grass and began scanning the sky, turning from side to side in search of something specific.

Baekhyun glanced up but saw nothing out of the ordinary. _“You good?”_ he asked.

Kai scratched his head and found his center while focused on the moon above them. _“Yeah...it’s just, I don’t know...do you feel like an eclipse is about to happen too?”_

_“An eclipse?”_ Baekhyun felt no such indication but found himself double checking the moon anyway: a waxing crescent. Looked normal enough. _“I don’t feel anything, Kai.”_

_“Right…”_ Kai stared at the moon for a moment longer before peeling his eyes away.

Baekhyun looked at Kai with concern. _“You would probably know better than I would. This is your element. What exactly do you feel?”_

Kai held up a shaking hand for both of them to see. _“I feel tingly. And it’s almost...familiar?”_ He shook his head. _“I’m not sure.”_

Baekhyun wasn’t sure either. Typically an eclipse was something he’d feel too. And there usually wasn’t much warning before it took place. Whatever Kai was feeling had to be something different...right?

Baekhyun didn’t need their bond to see that Kai was freaked out. Comforting others wasn’t necessarily Baekhyun’s greatest strength, but he still cared enough to try. He patted Kai on the back and said, _“Maybe a snack would help. I hear the expired ketchup in the fridge is still edible.”_

Kai breathed out a laugh. _“I_ could _go for a corndog right now.”_

Baekhyun took one last look at the moon before following Kai into the house. It had to be a false alarm. There was no other explanation.

The eclipses were their only ally in this battle. He couldn’t bear to imagine what it would be like if they weren’t on their side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yangyang: "Dang it, Kun! We've been wanting to use that trebuchet since forever!"
> 
> Any guesses as to what WeishenV's trebuchet ammo was going to be? hahaha


End file.
